Volvo 480 Club Europe

In a store I peeked into the current issue of the Dutch Autoweek classic car magazine. It features a story about the 480 convertible and interviews with designers Rob Koch and John de Vries.
Being Dutch I didn't buy it and from memory a few interesting facts that may for that reason be less accurate.

Apparently the 480 is build on the Renault 9 floorpan. The high bulkhead was a problem they had to workaround designing the car. The groove under the bonnet was to visually lower the waist of the car.

The convertible was to be build by a UK company. They -the designers- had doubts about them but a deal was forced onto them. However the company went into receivership before production could start. One prototype and the moulds were stored for many years, then offered on Ebay. A Dutchman bought them, and was able to have a Dutch license for the car. He also converted it from right hand drive to lhd. This car is featured in the story. Two other prototypes also still should exist.

When the UK production failed it was tried to have Karmann build the cars. However Karmann demanded the car be totally re-engineered to meet their quality standards. Well ahead in the life cycle of the 480, this would mean the convertible would be delayed too many years and made no sense at the end of the model's life, so it was cancelled. (Leave alone the extra costs...)



-
While for many people the convertible seem to be the holy grail personally I think it's just plain ugly. Chopping it takes away the design clues that make the 480 to what it is. Plus the extra rolloverbar and roof cover spoil it even more but that's just my two cents.

But they asked John de Vries to re-draw the 480 convertible (he called it the 480 ES C) and that was much more true to the original 480. I took a picture out of the magazine, it is not in the best quality but it will give you a good impression.



John de Vries is a very nice man. He knows a lot of stories about the design stage of the 480, despite he left Volvo in 1985 for DAF, to design the DAF 95 truck. Not a bad move, the DAF 95 became Truck of the Year 1988.

Just an image saved from the compromised Photobucket account and stored elsewhere:

480 in the wet:

Posted before but compromised by the Photobucket 25mb/month download limit:



Aftermarket airbags for the 480

Brilliant !!

Thanks!

A friend sent me some images of drawings, models and prototypes of the nose-job that never made it into production.



I suppose these are well known and no need to up them all?

Ends up looking a little like a renault 19 in my eyes....

Thank heavens it never happened!

I am currently editing the English edition of a very interesting Dutch book about the 480 written by Eric Vanaubel and his friend which details all the design period with lots of photos. Hopefully it will be available later this year. Eric has a real gift for drawing so the book also contains some wonderful artwork.

jifflemon wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:52 am

Ends up looking a little like a renault 19 in my eyes....

Thank heavens it never happened!

With a liberal dose of Rover SD1...

David

saves wiring and alignment issues with the headlights ? ? ? ?

and most importantly MONEY on the motors . . . . (maybe a regulation as fewer pop-ups now) although I can attach a link showing just how many DID have pop-ups , drop downs etc

Safety regulations killed off the Pop-up headlight.
This was mainly down to pedestrian safety regulations being tightened up and having a ‘sharp’ surface area was deemed too dangerous for most manufacturers to bother continuing with pop-ups. They require the front-end of cars to be more squishy in case of hitting a pedestrian
The problem lies where it’s just too difficult to develop modern pop-up headlights to be in line with the new standards set by the European design laws.

Ah so memeory was not too far off

see this link for a 'definative list'

http://www.scimitarweb.co.uk/sgwrs/view ... 17&t=13005