The parking lot at my local coffee shop is littered with Porsche cars every Sunday morning for their weekly meet. Some go to church, others congregate over cars. I usually fall into the ladder.
Each Sunday I meander among the cars, on the outskirts of conversations but never invited in. Perhaps because I don’t own Porsche. Who knows?
This Sunday, however, what greeted me as I walked by was not a medical-degree-on-wheels, but a Volvo Amazon.
Backstory
The Volvo Amazon started in the 1960s as Volvo’s transition out of the 40s/50s styling and platforms, into a modern, more competitive international car. Volvo created this new line of vehicles with the B18 sitting as the foundational bones that they would eventually use to build a better known P1800 model.
The amazon picked up a pretty big following in the rally world as it was a lighter, two door variant of this new platform, though without the James-Bond esque trappings of the fancier P1800.
Powerplant
The Amazon is powered by a B18, which famously went 3 million f*cking miles owned by Irv Gordon in 2013 .
It does this by being an overbuilt, under-stressed motor with no timing belt or chain, but relies on internal timing gears and OHV push rods.
This example
This was a particularly cool example, with red steelies, beautiful interior, rally nods a vibe that embraces the Amazon’s place in Volvo’s lineup at the time. Unfortunately, I never caught up with the owner. I guess the Porsche guys adopted him.
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