The Price of Success: 1976 Volvo 264GL Test

From the April 1976 issue of Car and Driver.

Here’s a flash: Volvo has a new V-6 model called the 264, and the company is sending it out into the marketplace telling people that it will compete with BMWs and Cadillacs. Are you ready for that?

Volvo, you will remember, sold its first car on these shores—a kind of 8/10-scale replica of a ’47 Ford—a mere 21 years ago. It was not what you’d call a class piece, that car, and the company would probably have been driven back into the sea were it not for the reputation for durability that came to surround the PV444. The pavement would wear out sooner, people said. More recently, Volvos have attracted quite a following among the seat freaks. They reckon that Volvo buckets are the next best thing to Stratoloungers. But while these are two very nice things to have people saying about one’s cars, they don’t exactly add up to an escape-­proof ambush for Cadillac.

More likely, what Volvo means is that the 264 costs as much as a Cadillac. Which it most certainly does. A nice, round $10,409.25 would put you into our test car. But that is not the same as competing with Cadillac. In fact, we’re going to stick our editorial necks out and say that people who aspire to Cadillacs will have little enthusiasm for the Volvo, and vice versa. Because Cadillacs—with the exception of the Seville—are still sold to those who measure prestige in acres of sheetmetal. When they spend big money, they want a big car. And it had better roll down the road with the ride motions of the QE II and the silence of a cathedral on Thursday after­noon. If they really had their druthers, the damn thing would drive itself; spare them the bother.

For people like this, the Volvo is hopeless. Any way you look at it, it’s a compact car—a tall, skinny, Swedish Dodge Dart with headroom for basketball players. From the wind­shield aft, the 264 resembles every other Volvo of the last 10 years, and the all-new front looks a little like an electric razor with headlights; a car like this will never knock them dead at the country club. If you buy it, you are obviously buying it for yourself, because nobody else is going to ooh and aah over it.

But the difference between the Volvo and all of the other cars in the world that nobody oohs and aahs over is that Volvo puts function ahead of everything else. The 264GL is totally without pretense. It is a motorcar, not some piece of exotic mobile sculpture, and everything about it has been de­signed for hauling people rather than dazzling them. While that may not offer much competition for Cadillac, it’s a rare and insightful way to build a car, particularly if you’re trying to avoid competition. And Volvo has the high-priced-functionality corner of the market pretty much to itself.

The pleasure of a Volvo’s utility begins with its upright body. No contortions are necessary to enter it, front or back. The doors are tall, the seats are chair height; you just walk in and sit down. It’s as natural as bellying up to the dining-room ta­ble. The seats are also high enough to hold you in a position that is more comfortable than what you’ll get in almost any other contemporary car. And the room is just where you need it. The car is actually quite narrow—only 67.2 inches wide compared to 74 for a Granada—but there is space for three abreast in back with plenty of clearance around the heads and knees. The front has seats for two passengers, and they have an exceptional view. The height of the seats allows you to look down on almost any other car built after 1956, and there’s enough glass that anything small enough to fit in the Volvo’s blind spot is hardly worth seeing.

Once you grow accustomed to the Volvo’s interior dimen­sions, you begin to notice the intensely functional nature of every piece of equipment that confronts you. A close look at the instrument panel tells you the whole story about this car. It’s black—matte-finish non-glare black—from one side to the other and all the way down to the tunnel-top console. Even the steering wheel is a dull, light-absorbing black, and none of the instruments are blocked by its rim. There is no wood or bright metal moldings for decoration and no die-cast script on the glove box door spelling out Premier or Special Edition or whatever the marketing men thought would ease your con­science after spending so much money on a car. You are, however, provided with a tachometer at the center of your gaze. All of the switches and small controls are easily reached on the aircraft-style console, and four high-level vents are on duty to supply you with air in whatever quantity and direction you choose. What you get in this car is all busi­ness, not baloney.

That theme is evident in the front seats. No tuck-and-rolled lizard skin with mohair frieze accents in this car. The 264GL offers two choices of seat coverings: leather and velour. It’s what’s under the covering that counts. The padding is firm for good support on long hauls, yet the cushions are not deeply contoured. These are comfortable but not confining seats. Naturally, you get the benefit of Volvo’s adjustable lumbar support. Additionally, the driver’s side has an electric heating element in the cushions and a lever-controlled height adjust­ment in the supporting frame. Almost any personal seating preference has been anticipated in the Volvo.

If you are the sort of driver who prefers to shift your own gears, Volvo offers options in that department, too. A four­-speed manual transmission is standard equipment, overdrive and automatic are options. The test car had the overdrive—in effect a fifth gear available at the flip of a switch on top of the shift knob. It’s a nice device, much more convenient than a straight five-speed gearbox and especially appropriate to a manual-transmission car priced above $10,000; after all, driv­ers with that kind of money might like to avoid a shift once in a while. With the overdrive, you don’t have to work the clutch or move the shift lever to slip into the cruising ratio. In fact, you don’t even have to lift off the gas. Just flip the switch and you’ve reduced engine revs by 20 percent. And should you need a little extra punch for passing, just flip it the other way and you’re back in fourth gear.

Regardless of which transmission you choose with the 264, you get a 90-degree V-6 engine of 2.7 liters. This engine is the result of a joint effort between Renault, Peugeot, and Volvo, and although each of the companies uses it in its top-of-the-line model, Volvo is the first to import it into the U.S. The design seems to be both original and brave. From the rocker covers down to the bottom of the block, the engine is cast in aluminum. Wet liners are used in the cylinders. Each bank has a chain-driven overhead camshaft, which operates the angled valves through rocker-arm followers. Nestled in the valley be­tween the banks is the metering apparatus for the Bosch K-­Jetronic fuel-injection system. Judging from the quantity of aluminum used, one would expect this powerplant to be quite light. Volvo quotes 330 pounds including fuel injection and electrical equipment—29 pounds lighter than the 2.1-liter four-cylinder (which has been given an aluminum head for the 1976 model year) used in the 240 series.

Even knowing all of this, one tends to take a dim view of 90-degree V-6s because of the unequal firing interval. In reali­ty, these engines are V-8s (either they once were or the de­signers hope they someday will be) with two cylinders miss­ing, and even though the arrangement of the crank throws has been changed to bring the balance back into line, it’s impossible to completely compensate for the absent cylin­ders. The time between firings is longer for some cylinders than others. You can feel it, particularly at low speeds and when you engage the clutch to move away from rest, there is a sort of chattering vibration. Fortunately, tuning of the drive­line and engine mounts pretty well masks it in the Volvo. Chances are that if you didn’t know enough to look for the unsteadiness, you’d never notice it.

Even though the V-6 is about 300 cc smaller than the inline-six of the old 164 sedan, performance of the two cars is near­ly the same and generally comparable to Volare/Granada-­type Detroit compacts with small V-8s. (It must be under­stood, however, that we are comparing a manual-transmis­sion Volvo to a domestic automatic; an automatic Volvo would be somewhat slower.)

In the braking test, the Volvo’s performance was a disap­pointment. The rear wheels locked up early, well before the fronts would generate their full retardation. As a result, stop­ping from 70 mph required 209 feet (0.78 g). Going over the results of past Volvo tests, it becomes apparent that rear­-wheel lock-up has been a traditional problem. It could be fixed by using a different adjustment on the proportioning valves (Volvos have two)—a step so easily accomplished that the factory apparently has reasons for doing otherwise. Very like­ly, the valves have been biased for either heavy loads or slip­pery roads or perhaps some combination of both. That’s fine as far as it goes, but when you’re driving to work all by your­self some sunny day and suddenly the freeway ahead glows red with hundreds of brakelights, it’s not much consolation.

There are a number of cars on the market that stop no better than our test car, but it seems a shame when Volvo uses such an elaborate and thoughtful braking system. All four corners have discs, and the hydraulic lines and calipers are arranged in such a way that no matter which of the dual circuits tails, the car still has operative brakes on two front wheels and one rear wheel. A system as good as this de­serves the final tuning it requires to live up to its potential.

Despite the disappointing brakes, the 264 is still the best Volvo ever. It’s not really a new model but rather a refitted old one, shored up where past models needed help. Right now, you have a choice of a four-door or the 265 station wagon. A 262 two-door sedan will be available in late spring. Those who have followed this marque will remember that the 164 luxury sedan was made from the 144 sedan by stretching the car’s front sheetmetal and wheelbase to make room for an inline six-cylinder engine in place of the old four. But with the new V-6, the extra length wasn’t necessary, so now both the four- and six-cylinder 200-series Volvo sedans have the same external dimensions. Since the main body section was common to both four- ­and six-cylinder cars, they’ve always had the same interior dimensions, which are continued in the 264.

The new models, first the 240 series and now the 264, have a revised suspension, the most conspicuous change being a MacPherson-strut arrangement in front to replace the old control-arm type. And although it’s not intrinsic in MacPherson struts, the new cars handle much better. The 264 walks the middle ground between the agile and enticing road behavior of a BMW that makes you want to flog it and the mindless straight­-line cruising capability of a Cadillac that encourages you to sit back and listen to the radio. The 264 is definitely a driver’s car—but more businesslike than sport­ing. It seems well suited to any type of road, but it is particularly impressive on rough surfaces, where its shock absor­ber damping does an excellent job of keeping ride motions within reasonable limits. And the increased roll stiffness re­duces the ponderous, tippy feeling in turns that characterized past models.

If you prefer Volvos over any other leading brand, all of this should be enough. But the 264’s appeal is broader. There are very few rugged and roomy sedans on the market that encourage participation on the part of the driver. And fewer still that value function over fashion. Even though Volvo is asking you to pay a high price for motoring’s fundamental verities, it’s good to know they are available it you want them.