Junkyard Find: 1980 Volvo 262C Bertone Coupe
Only 6,622 Volvo 262C Bertone Coupes were built during the Italo-Swedish machine’s 1978-1981 production run, and I’ve found two of them in California self-serve wrecking yards during the last year. We saw this silver ’79 (actually, all ’78 and ’79 262Cs were painted in Mystic Silver) last summer, and now there’s today’s find: a gold ’80. These cars were weird-looking and something of a puzzling marketing move by Volvo, but you’d think that their rarity would give them sufficient value to keep the survivors out of The Crusher‘s jaws. Nope!
Assembled in Italy!
The 262C-specific glass and trim pieces have been pulled, and there’s plenty of typical Northern California upper-body rust in places where weatherstripping failure can let water in. The lower body panels are good and solid.
We can assume that some project 262C will benefit from these parts.
If I owned one of these cars, I’d ditch the unreliable Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6 and replace it with a good old B230 (or something more interesting). In the case of this car, though, someone has grabbed the PRV.
Still a few pieces worth taking left on this car. Let’s hope they get pulled before the car gets crushed.
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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Stoic meets Gucci with garlic underpinnings. P1800 wears the halo here... And you know they made big song & dance at PRV debut.
Honestly, it is a huge pity that these cars disappear. They're neither particularly pretty, nor especially good, but so interesting! What a blend...and as you say: "The lower body panels are good and solid" - the Volvo bit is solid. Surprise. In Europe, good 262C's go for 10-14000€. They are a very popular import item, that is export to you guys in the US then. 2/3 of the 262C Bertone I see for sale are US-imports, like this one from Kansas, now offered for a nice and round 10000$: http://www.finn.no/finn/car/used/object?finnkode=47626305