Junkyard Find: 1966 Volvo Amazon Coupe
The Volvo 122S aka Amazon is not a very common sighting in American self-serve junkyards these days. In this series so far, we’ve seen just this ’62 sedan, and I’ve also written about this flood-damaged ’69 coupe and this ’66 wagon elsewhere. On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I spotted this well-worn but still relatively complete ’66 coupe.
There’s some rust, where it always happens in California cars whose weatherstripping gets powderized by smog and sun: in the corners where rainwater flowing past the windows tends to accumulate during those long, wet winters.
The good old pushrod B engine (this car came from the factory with a B18, but I see “B20” cast into the block in this photo, indicating an engine swap). This engine looks non-grimy enough to have been a recent-ish swap.
Not that B20s are in any great junkyard demand these days (having been installed in fairly common 140s and very common 240s, you can always find one in California wrecking yards), but these good-enough-to-run-but-not-great compression readings scrawled on the underside of the hood might cause some internal debate in the minds of prospective purchasers: Are those numbers from the engine in the car now? Are they from 25 years ago? Are they actually the weights, in grams, of bags of weed offered for sale by the previous owner?
The interior is grimy but most of it is still present.
I couldn’t resist buying this aftermarket “Tri-Bar” Yankee Metal Products mirror. It will look good on my van. What the heck, $12.99 well spent.
Disc brakes were still pretty exotic stuff in the 1966 US-market car world.
I’ll bet this locking Waso gas cap was installed during the 1973 Oil Crisis. Cars with easily accessible, low-mounted fuel fillers were common siphoning targets during that era.
Too bad about the smashed rear window.
Odds are that Swedish women wouldn’t have tolerated this “Ha ha, the weaker sex cain’t drive!” ad, even in 1966.
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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I recall these old Volvo's were considered 'old' in the 70's.
GREAT cars ! . I remember in the 1980's & 1990's you could find a tired but rust free Amazon Coupe for $600 with a burned valve or bad brakes etc. but otherwise decent . I suppose this one is restorable but that rust made me think it's a parts car ~ if I had an Inde Volvo Shop I'da kept this one handy for the mryad small daily driver parts it contains , I'd easily make well over $4K out of it and scrapped only a bare shell . -Nate