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An Encounter with the Tiniest Volvo Ever

By on October 9, 2008 in Features

By Andy Bannister

10.09.2008

One interesting aspect of the current economic slowdown and the apparent seismic shift in vehicle buying habits is to ponder how quickly and in what way makers will respond.

Last time this happened, in the fuel crisis of the mid-1970s, some unusual vehicles hit the market. Earlier this week I was in Geneva in Switzerland and came across a well-preserved example of one of the strangest examples from that era, in the shape of the Volvo 66.

Nowadays Volvo has quite a broad range, although sales are falling and Ford is apparently struggling to decide what to do with the brand it acquired a few years ago. Back in the mid-1970s, however, it was effectively a one-model independent Swedish company, selling big and resolutely square saloons and estates which were extremely vulnerable to a change in buyer preferences.

With no prospect of quickly developing its own smaller car, Volvo’s management decided to look at buying in a model from elsewhere, and its eyes settled on DAF, a Dutch producer which since 1959 had been selling small two-door notchbacks with an innovative continuously variable transmission (CVT, more commonly known by the DAF trademark Variomatic) which certanly wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Continue Reading →

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