VOLVO P1800
Is it still worth bringing Volvo’s versatile GT into the UK? Let’s find out
alues have surged for this beautiful grand tourer, helping to preserve the viability of importing a P1800 from distant arid regions. But it’s a precarious situation. Our beleaguered pound is having a terrible time, the US dollar continues to boom, and there are reports that demand for the P1800 has flattened in the UK over the last 12 months. So the viability of doing that needs reassessing month by month, even though it’s not too difficult to find decent models that could be worth importing.
Simon Borrell of Bucks-based P1800 Specialists (p1800specialist. com, 07703 355869) has imported these cars into the UK from the USA, and believes that there’s
Vscope for bringing in more. ‘If you can find a decent example for around £20,000 it could be worth importing,’ Simon reckons. And according to our research, you can.
The USA is the most common hunting ground, given the Americans’ healthy appetite for the P1800 when it was new, and the dry climate of states such as Texas and California. The Netherlands has also become home to a good number of imported examples, many from the US. Just look out for modifications that wouldn’t be to British buyers’ tastes, warns Simon, and occasionally poorquality paint jobs with liberal use of filler. On the plus side, ‘structurally, the American cars are usually much better than over here’, Simon adds.
America is also a good place to find one of the very rare Jensenbuilt models from the initial production run of roughly 6000 cars, before Volvo, worried by quality control, terminated the Jensen arrangement and shifted production to Sweden.
Although some right-hand drive conversions have been carried out, it’s not a cost-effective swap, given the complicated modifications, especially to the bulkhead. Expect to spend more than £7000 if you have it done, more than twice the cost of importing a right-hand drive vehicle from Australia! The P1800 isn’t as common there as it is in the US, but nice examples do exist.
For an extra touch of exclusivity, try hunting down one of the ultra- rare – only about 50 were ever produced – convertible models made in the USA by a Volvo dealer in Long Island.