Remember the old Johnny Cash tune, “One Piece At A Time”? The premise sounds something like this: instead of going into debt buying a new, long and black Cadillac of his dreams, the narrator instead sneaks out parts and bit-by-stolen-bit builds himself a car whose title “weighs 60 pounds” when it’s finished. The result might have turned everybody’s head for the wrong reasons but the owner is proud of what has been accomplished. So what does that have to do with a Volvo 360? Originally meant to be the DAF 77, Volvo jumped on board as a partner initially but by 1975, had purchased the automobile side of DAF out and had started cranking out the 300-series of vehicles. A tiny little hatchback perfect for European roads, the 300-series ran from 1976-1991 and were moderately successful. But this little bastard…this is something special, indeed. The tires are from an Indycar…no Volvo came with spindle-mount wheels that were raided from a Formula racing machine. No Volvo came with a hair dryer that looks like someone walked into Mark Micke’s pits and nicked one of the turbochargers off of his Malibu. Park this violent little beast next to a nice 850 or even a new Volvo S60 and you’l sense that one of these cars was built with a lot of melodic metal playing in the background. Want a walkthrough of the baddest Volvo we’ve seen since the Touring car wagons of the 1990s? Click on the video below.
A friend of mine called Tony who runs a fine classic car restoration business very near where I live has one of these with similar upgrades and runs it on the street. Is in superb condition and attracts a lot of curiosity form people who just don’t know what it is!