Volvo 960 Estate
1995 VOLVO 960 24v AUTO ‘Have you seen this?’ started the email from my friend, Kingsley. ‘It’s very you.’ The link that followed took me to an eBay auction for a beige 1970s Volvo. But with two wheels instead of four. And made of plastic. And deeply flawed as a means of carriage. Kingsley was right – it was perfect for me.
Volvo dreamt up the Itera plastic bike project during its golden ‘we’re bigger than ABBA’ phase, possibly after one pickled herring too many. It wanted to make plastic cars, but probably looked at Saab’s Sonett experience and decided that maybe a bicycle might be wiser. 100,000 Swedes got hugely excited and said that they’d be interested in one of the injection-moulded plastic composite pedal machines. But when the bikes started reaching them, they were often missing parts and prone to breakages – hit a pothole and the wheels or handlebars could just give way – and possessed less structural integrity than an Austin Allegro Crayford convertible with no concrete in its sills. Around 30,000 were built up until 1985.
I won the internet auction with a bid of £103 and went to pick the bike up from nearby Oakham. Naturally, my vehicle of choice was my somewhat tougher Volvo, the 960 estate. It swallowed the Itera with ease and wafted it softly home without anything falling off.
I haven’t had something so overwhelmingly beige and patently unsuitable as transport since my last Leyland Princess. Even the support stand is plastic – which was fun when inflating the tyres on a hot day – it softened, warped and collapsed the Itera on top of me.
Riding it is just bizarre – it’s like piloting an inflatable space hopper on wheels, and is equally difficult to steer.
The bike was sold to raise money for the local air ambulance. I suspect, if I use it for any real journeys, I may well be in need of its services. Yet, I love the Itera – a fascinating glimpse of how Volvo saw the future in the 1970s.
And got it so, so wrong!