Junkyard Find: 1988 Volvo 780 Bertone Coupe
In the kind of Plate-O-Shrimp moment that happens all the time in the car-writing business, I ran across a genuine, one-of-8,515-build Volvo 780 Bertone Coupe in a Denver self-serve wrecking yard just days after writing about this fine Swedo-Italian machine.
Yes, in spite of being considered a high-value collector’s car by legions of Internet Car Experts, this rare 780 couldn’t manage to sell for better than scrap value at auction and thus ended up as a parts donor. By the way, if you’re restoring a 780 and you’re now looking at this post later than, say, April 2013, this car has been crushed by now. Sorry.
With the troublesome Peugeot-Renault-Volvo “PRV” V6 under the hood, 156,519 miles on the clock isn’t too shabby. This car reeked of old, bad gasoline, which means it sat for years or maybe decades before getting hauled off on its final tow-truck drive.
When Swedes and Italians join forces to design a car’s interior, you get something like this puzzling IKEA-meets-Armani scene. I might need to go back and get this seat for my van!
Speaking of weird design, where did Volvo find this more-80s-than- Flock-of-Seagulls font?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Like the GM billboard adds stated a couple of years back, "they don't write songs about Volvos."
When in the far reaches of Northern Sweden, you saw these driven by the bank manager, and that was about the sole extent of its market segment.