- Wanting for the quickest way to haul a number of cases of delicious salad dressing or spaghetti sauce dwelling from the grocery store? Consider this 1988 Volvo 740 wagon.
- Formerly owned by Paul Newman, this brick-shaped Volvo packs a shock underneath the hood: a turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6 from a Buick Grand Nationwide.
- This 740 is 1 of a series of modified Volvo wagons the legendary actor and racer owned, and it really is now for sale.
Vehicle and Driver
Wickedly fast at the wheel of a racing automobile and possessed of an easy neat, Paul Newman was fundamentally Steve McQueen with out the disagreeable individual baggage. To most men and women, he was the star of movies like Amazing Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but Newman was more Lime Rock than Hollywood. A favourite son of Westport, Connecticut, and a household person with a marriage that lasted 50 % a century (until his loss of life in 2008), he had a penchant for Volvo station wagons. Newman, even though, appreciated his Swedish iron excess-spicy underneath, as shown by his 1988 Volvo 740 wagon, up for auction on Provide a Trailer (which, like Auto and Driver, is portion of Hearst Autos).
A copy of the title suggests that Newman purchased this 740 in July 1988, and it truly is thought to be the initial Volvo he had modified to his technical specs. Individuals prolonged to the fitment of a turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6 out of a Buick Grand Nationwide hooked to a five-pace handbook transmission sourced from a Pontiac Firebird.
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In 1988, a factory-spec Volvo 740 Turbo wagon came with a turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder fantastic for approximately 150 horsepower. Newman’s swap extra than doubled the readily available electrical power to close to 320 horses (thanks in portion to a chipped European).
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Refined bodywork is complemented by a mild reducing on Bilstein dampers and springs and anti-roll bars from Volvo expert IPD. The 5-spoke 16-inch wheels are common 1980s Volvo and wear BFGoodrich g-Power Comp-2 A/S tires. Regardless of these clues, any bystander would imagine they had been on the lookout at an common outdated boxy Volvo, right up until this thing smoked its rear tires and hammered off toward the horizon.
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Newman, who reportedly obtained his first style of racing though filming the Indy 500–themed 1969 movie Profitable, went on to personal Volvo 960 wagons with V-8 transplants. He turned his Connecticut neighbor David Letterman on to them, too, and Jerry Seinfeld would push a single of people for an episode of Comedians in Cars and trucks Having Coffee.
Apart from motion pictures and racing, Newman’s philanthropic perform is what actually puts the remaining gloss on his legend. His Newman’s Possess brand name has contributed some $600 million towards charitable results in due to the fact its founding in 1982. In 1988, the year this Volvo was shipped, he established the Hole in the Wall Gang camp, a put wherever children dealing with serious disease could appreciate the independence of summer camp.
As a nod to this charitable spirit, the seller of this ex-Newman Volvo will donate a part of the proceeds of the sale to the Hole in the Wall Gang camp. If a Grand National–powered sleeper wagon with movie star provenance wasn’t sufficient, casting the winning bid on this Volvo will do a little very good in the world. It can be probably what Newman himself would have wanted.
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Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance author and photographer dependent in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British cars, arrived of age in the golden period of Japanese activity-compact general performance, and commenced composing about cars and trucks and persons in 2008. His specific fascination is the intersection amongst humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing profession of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s 50 %-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught the two of his young daughters how to change a manual transmission and is grateful for the justification they deliver to be perpetually getting Hot Wheels.
