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N0KFQ > TODAY 20.10.15 15:37l 56 Lines 2600 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 70565_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Oct 20
Path: IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<IR0AAB<GB7CIP<XE1FH<HG8LXL<N0KFQ
Sent: 151020/1432Z 70565@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.64
1965
Last Volvo PV rolls off the assembly line
At 3 p.m. on October 20, 1965, the very last PV-series Volvo
drives off the assembly line in Lundby, Sweden. The car, a zippy
black Sport PV544 with red interior trim, went straight to the
Volvo Museum in Gothenburg. PV-series Volvos had been in
production, first as the PV444 and then as the PV544, since 1947
and 440,000 sold in all. By the end of its run, the PV was
old-fashioned-looking_the company had made very few cosmetic
changes in the two decades the car had been on the market_but it
remained a good, solid automobile. "Above all," Road & Track
magazine said in 1963, "the Volvo PV544 is such a practical car.
Volvo's most attractive appeal lies in its solidity and its
quality in every single respect. There is nothing slapdash or
under-dimensioned about any part of the car and that is more than
enough to compensate for any perceived lack of glamour."
Volvo (the company's name is Latin for "I roll) was founded in
Gothenburg, Sweden in 1927 and quickly won a reputation for
building sturdy, safe cars. After World War II, the company
unveiled the PV444_between 1947 and 1958 it sold more than
200,000 of the diminutive cars_and it introduced the PV544 in
August 1958. The two cars were virtually identical_both were
slightly humpbacked and dowdy_except that the PV544 had a
one-piece windshield in place of the PV444's divided one, a
larger rear window and a bigger flip-out side windows, all of
which brightened up the car's interior considerably. Neither
model ever had four doors, right-hand drive or an interior clock.
Despite the cars' anachronistic appearance, people loved them. A
PV Volvo might have looked stodgy, but it did not drive it: it
could go from zero to 60 mph in 13 seconds, could cruise
comfortably at 70 mph and got 27 miles per gallon on the highway.
The PVs were great family cars but they were also powerful,
sturdy racers: In 1965, for example, Kenyan brothers Joginder and
Jaswant Singh won one of the toughest road races in the world,
the 3,000-mile East African Safari rally, in their 1964 PV544.
(Among other things, drivers in the safari had to negotiate
falling boulders, mud puddles, errant herds of buffalo and
giraffes blocking the road.)
Of the 440,000 PVs built, 280,000 stayed in Sweden. Most of the
rest were exported to other European countries. In 1966, in place
of the PV-series cars, the company introduced the 144 sedan, the
car that is the ancestor of the boxy Volvos seen today.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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