Car of the Week: 1972 Volvo 1800E

“My dad bought this car in Latham, N.Y.,” recalls Hardy, a resident of Syracuse. “And there was five of us in the family. This was not practical. My mother hated it. Like two weeks later, she got a station wagon because she was like, ‘Why are you bringing this home before a station wagon?’ But anyway, he drove it and probably realized it wasn’t practical because no one ever really drove it a lot. But I think it was the style. He liked the style. He was a very stylish kind of guy.”

The Volvo may have been a bit of a mid-life crisis purchase for Nunez. And picking a Volvo over all the other fun cars he probably could have had at the time was an interesting move.

“My dad was an immigrant. He was born in The Philippines, and he came here, and he was just turning 50 at the time,” Hardy says. “And it was like the time that you made it, you know what I mean? Like, he felt like he had made it. And a lot of his colleagues were buying jazzy cars. They were all buying Jaguars and Mercedes, and they were all parking together I think… And my father was a very practical guy when it came to money, and he probably figured with this car, he could have that same kind of style for a lot less money! He only went to work a couple miles from the house, really. So he didn’t really drive it too much. My mother always said he went too fast and he got a lot of speeding tickets because it was red!”

Kim’s husband, Joe, was a neighbor when the two were growing up and he knew Edmundo’s car pretty well. He just never figured on owning and restoring it some day. Nunez drove the car for about eight years, and then pretty much retired it in the family garage.

“In 1980 he stopped driving it,” Joe says. “It sat in his garage for 20 years before I brought it out to Syracuse, and it sat for another 20 years before I restored it… For some reason he kept it. And for me to [restore it], I think that was really special for him. He came to some shows and got to see people looking at it, and he said, ‘People never looked at it then like they look at it today.’”

If you don’t recall the 1972 Volvo 1800s, or any of the 1800 variants sold in the United States, don’t feel bad. There weren’t a ton of the Swedish imports made, and for as interesting and stylish as they were, the sporty Volvo 1800 series cars never gained a lot of traction on U.S. soil. Total production of the 1800 line from 1961 through 1973 was 47,492 units. Nunez bought one of the 1,865 1800E coupes that were built that year, with a base window price of $4,850 — roughly half what a E-Type Jaguar would have cost at the time.

The fuel-injected 1800 coupe earned high marks for its sleek fastback styling and robust reliability. Powered by a 2.0-liter B20 engine with Bosch electronic fuel injection, it produced 130 hp and featured four-wheel disc brakes. The most famous of these cars, no doubt, was a 1966 Volvo P1800S owned by Irv Gordon (1940–2018) of East Patchogue, N.Y., who set a Guinness world record for highest mileage on a car by an original owner when he racked up a staggering total of 3.2 million miles.

Earlier, Roger Moore had helped put the Volvo 1800 on the map when his character, Simon Templar, drove one in the popular TV series “The Saint.”

The “E” in the model name stood for Einspritzung, which meant fuel injection in German. The E variant arrived in 1970 and had a few upgrades and improvements from previous models, including a more modern dashboard, a revised grille, and larger side marker lights. The interior tweaks included a completely new wood-imitation dashboard and a locking center console. In addition to the new matte black front grille, the 1800E’s wore unique “clover rim” wheels, and a lockable gas cap was moved to the rear wing.

The 1972 model year was also the final year that the coupe was sold along with its hatchback wagon sibling, the 1800ES, which lasted one more season.

The 1800E could achieve a top speed of 110 mph and reportedly clocked 0 to 60 times of about 9.6 seconds. The four-speed manual transmissions were usually mated to an electrically operated Laycock de Normanville overdrive. Brakes were power-assisted discs on all four wheels. The independent front suspension used coil springs and wishbones. The rear suspension featured a live axle with trailing arms and coil springs. Steering was rack and pinion and the body was unibody with a long hood and short tail. Curb weight was listed at 2,490 lbs.

Red was one five colors available to buyers. The refined Volvo sports cars also came in California White, Midnight Blue, Gold and Cypress Green.

Nunez had a hard time parting with his Volvo, even many years after he stopped driving it. His daughter and son-in-law eventually warmed up to the idea of keeping the car around, and Joe finally decided to tackle a restoration on the car with the help of a friend in 2017. Even though it only had about 40,000 miles on the clock, Joe said the years of inactivity had not been kind to the Volvo.

“I remember the car in his garage, and there was always a lot of stuff on top of it,” he recalled. “There was never any mercy to it or anything like that. It was just a collector of stuff.

“Me and my buddy Gary re-did the whole thing. And I will tell you, he was really the expert. He lost his job because of COVID, so it worked out perfect because he had time to work on it, and we did it right in his garage.”

The remake included pulling the engine and taking it in for a rebuild. All the shiny bits were re-chromed or replaced, including re-chroming the bumpers, and the coupe was given a fresh coat of its factory-correct Code 46 red paint. The couple kept everything as authentic and factory-correct as they could — right down the original eight-track player.

“That eight-track player was put in at the dealer,” Kim said. “He got that instead of air-conditioning! For some reason, he loved the cold. He didn’t care about, you know, how hot or cold he was. Air conditioning was not a big thing to him, but that eight-track was!”

Since getting the Volvo back on the road, the Hardys haven been becoming “car people” for the first time and take their sporty coupe as many places as they can. There have been plenty of memorable road trips already, and together they have pushed the odometer up over 70,000 miles. Among their road trips this summer was a July run from Syracuse to central Wisconsin for the big Iola Car Show, where it was the only Volvo in the Blue Ribbon Corral.

“It just drives great,” Joe says. “It’s just chill style!”

“It’s only got a small tank, so on these long drives, we do have to stop a lot for gas, but it’s very comfortable,” Kim adds. “Honestly, I feel more comfortable in this than I do my Ford Explorer. And as the passenger, I feel more comfortable in this, maybe because I’m shorter and, you know, I’m closer to the ground.”

Kim still chuckles when she thinks back to the decision her father made to buy the Volvo in the first place. The idea that the “impractical” coupe is still in the family after all these years perhaps permanently validates the purchase.

“A lot of those guys didn’t go for the small cars back then,” she says. “If you had some money, a lot of those guys went for like big Cadillacs and Lincolns and stuff like that at the time. And again, you know, it’s a foreign car, so it doesn’t get the looks that it probably deserves sometimes.” 

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