Volvo’s reputation for building safe, durable automobiles has been cemented for years now, but in early 1960s America, if it didn’t come from an American manufacturer, chances were good that it was derided and ignored. Unfortunately for the car buyer who took that attitude, they missed out on one tough little bastard of a car…remember, this is the product of Sweden. The Amazon/122S had to tolerate everything that Scandinavia could throw at it before it was thrown onto a boat, shipped over and placed into the hands of Americans who were drowning in tail fins and excessive chrome. It did have quite a bit going for it: it had a rough-and-ready four cylinder hooked to a four-speed, looked like a scaled-down mid-1950s Chrysler, and could take a beating, something that Volvo capitalized on with this 1962 commercial. If you weren’t a fan of anything else that a Volvo had to offer, surely the combination of excellent fuel economy and the ability to stand up to whatever you felt like putting the car through would be an attractive point.
