Our friend Dan Johnston has been one of the friendly faces of Volvo Cars’ Public Affairs for more than 15 years, actually having started with Volvo by working in the automaker’s Parts Operations warehouses in California while still in college in 1966, when he remembers PV544s still being executive company cars; Dan’s own first company car was a safety orange-painted 1972 145 wagon. During this impressive tenure, he’s watched Volvo grow from a little-known importer of solid, dependable Swedish cars to a highly regarded safety- and design-driven automaker whose models compete on the world stage.
Dan has used his XC60 blog to share a never-before-released video and creative images of progressive Volvo styling. He’s posted a video, shot in 1996 at the company’s Rockleigh, New Jersey HQ, that features Volvo’s head of design, Peter Horbury, doing a walk-around on the yet-unseen car that would signal a new era of styling for the previously straight edged automaker.
The expressive 1997-2002 C70 Coupe, like the 1998-2004 C70 Convertible that would follow, was developed in conjunction with England’s touring car and Formula 1 powerhouse TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) on the 850 platform, and as Peter explained, it honored Volvo’s traditional design cues in an entirely new language.
I had the honor of seeing this video when it was still in VHS form as a personal loan from Dan shortly after I purchased my own C70, one of exactly 20 Nautic Blue manual gearbox Coupes to come to the U.S. in 2000.
When I met up with Dan at the New York Auto Show this past April, we discussed Peter Horbury’s reinstatement as the head of Volvo design, replacing Steve Mattin, who held the position for the past four years while Peter acted as the executive director of Ford Americas design. It was then that Dan told me about the impromptu sketches he’d asked Peter and Steve to create around a purely hypothetical reborn PV544; ”After a few beers, they both broke under my constant pestering to have them pen a retro 544.”
One of Peter’s doodles…
And Steve’s…
Click through the above links to see high-res images and read Dan’s musings on these fantastic personal creations.
Thanks for sharing, Dan!
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