Volvo GTZ 3000 by Zagato
Considering the other cars available at the time, being the Italian importer of Volvos must have been quite the slog in the 1960s and ’70s. A style conscious choice? Definitely not.
Before functionality and safety became virtues on which the Swedish carmaker could build their brand and sell cars upon, in many segments, it was the golden age for vehicles that were neither all that functional nor safe.
Introduced in 1961, the Volvo P1800 Coupé is an attractive car, but by no means a serious sporting contender once outright handling and the performance of our slinky Swede are measured. For a Volvo, yes, it's a beautiful GT car. For Volvo, yes, it's a sports coupe.
By Italian standards, however, the P1800 is as sporty as the ho-hum Sunbeam Venezia. For a country with race tracks such as Monza within its borders, a 2.0-litre 4-cylinder iron block engine’d Volvo doesn't quite cut it.
The Volvo importer to Italy, a company called Motauto, knew this — and tried to convince Volvo to give them something hotter.
Around 1963, Motauto hired Fissore to turn the P1800 into a more attractive design, in time for the Torino Motor Show — the design consultancy ended up building three mock-ups.
Fissore Volvo P1800 styling mock-ups; note the Ford Mustang-like rear window treatment on the darker car • source unknown
Volvo declined to turn any of the proposals into a production car.
1969 Volvo 140-based GTZ 2000 by Zagato • Zagato
In 1969, Motauto brought out the big guns, hiring Zagato to not only rebody the P1800, but to do so in dramatic fashion. The 2.0-litre, 140-series-based coupe was even wedgier than Fissore’s…and in places looked like a slightly larger version of the Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato.
Volvo again declined.
Surely stretching the limit of both the office party budget and Volvo's patience, Motauto asked Zagato to design one more car for Volvo's approval. Some sources claim that Volvo was considering replacing the P1800 with or adding another coupe to the lineup with a more powerful six-cylinder engine.
The introduced-in-1968 Volvo 164 and its 3.0-litre inline 6-cylinder engine were a perfect platform for Zagato's 1970 Volvo show car, which was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show that year.
Motauto was confident that Volvo would at least provide them with something in the way of a new sports car — by this time, the P1800 was far behind more its athletic competitors in the market.
1970 Volvo GTZ 3000 by Zagato • Zagato
