The Volvo Sport is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 fiberglass

Fiberglass

Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

-bodied roadster

Roadster

A roadster is a two-seat open car with emphasis on sporty handling and without a fixed roof or side weather protection. Strictly speaking a roadster with wind-up windows is a convertible but as true roadsters are no longer made the distinction is now irrelevant...

 of which sixty-eight units were built between 1956 and 1957 by Volvo Cars

Volvo Cars

Volvo Car Corporation, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Swedish automobile manufacturer founded in 1927, in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Volvo was originally formed as a subsidiary company to the ball bearing maker SKF. When Volvo AB was introduced on the Swedish...

.

Assar Gabrielsson

Assar Gabrielsson

Assar Thorvald Nathanael Gabrielsson was a Swedish industrialist and co-founder of Volvo.- Family :He married Anna Theresia Andreasson in 1916...

, Volvo's president and founder, got the idea for the car when he saw a Chevrolet Corvette

Chevrolet Corvette

The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car by the Chevrolet division of General Motors that has been produced in six generations. The first model, a convertible, was designed by Harley Earl and introduced at the GM Motorama in 1953 as a concept show car. Myron Scott is credited for naming the car after...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and wanted to make something similar. He asked Glasspar

Glasspar

The Glasspar boat-building company was started in 1947 when Bill Tritt began building small fiberglass boat hulls in his Costa Mesa, California fiberglass shop.-Origins:...

, an American boatbuilder

Boat building

Boat building, one of the oldest branches of engineering, is concerned with constructing the hulls of boats and, for sailboats, the masts, spars and rigging.-Parts:* Bow - the front and generally sharp end of the hull...

 in Santa Ana

Santa Ana, California

Santa Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, to tool a fibreglass/reinforced polyester

Polyester

Polyester is a category of polymers which contain the ester functional group in their main chain. Although there are many polyesters, the term "polyester" as a specific material most commonly refers to polyethylene terephthalate...

 body, which was later produced in Sweden.

The car was built on a tubular-steel chassis

Chassis

A chassis consists of an internal framework that supports a man-made object. It is analogous to an animal's skeleton. An example of a chassis is the underpart of a motor vehicle, consisting of the frame with the wheels and machinery.- Vehicles :In the case of vehicles, the term chassis means the...

 and used the Volvo PV444's 1,414 cubic centimetre engine producing 70 hp. The engines (B14A and B16B ) were fitted with twin SU carburetors, driving through a three-speed manual

Manual transmission

A manual transmission, also known as a manual gearbox or standard transmission is a type of transmission used in motor vehicle applications...

 gearbox

Transmission (mechanics)

A machine consists of a power source and a power transmission system, which provides controlled application of the power. Merriam-Webster defines transmission as: an assembly of parts including the speed-changing gears and the propeller shaft by which the power is transmitted from an engine to a...

. Many other parts were taken also from the Volvo PV444.

Demand was low, and the build quality was not up to Volvo standards. Gunnar Engellau, who replaced Gabrielsson as president in 1956, took one for a drive on a holiday weekend and was dissatisfied enough that on returning to his office the following week cancelled the remaining production. "I thought it would fall apart!" is the legendary quote.

The total "Volvo Sport" production was sixty-eight cars, plus four or five prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

s. Forty-four were built in 1956, mostly for the Swedish market, and most still survive. The bulk of 1957's production went to the U.S. and elsewhere, and fewer of these are still in existence.

Volvo's next sports car, the P1800

Volvo P1800

-History:The project was started in 1957 because Volvo wanted a sports car, despite the fact that their previous attempt, the P1900, had been a disaster, with only 68 cars sold. The man behind the project was an engineering consultant to Volvo, Helmer Petterson, who in the 1940s was responsible for...

, was much more successful with 47,492 units sold.

External links

• Czap, Nick (February 18, 2010). "Unrequited Longing for the 67th Volvo". The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  . Accessed February 24, 2010.