The Volvo Duett is two cars in one – In the Wild

For generations, Volvo was the lord and master when it came to very practical and nice-driving station wagons. Think of successes such as the 850 Estate and the V70s. These are all cars in which you can easily rack up the miles and also throw a nice bookcase in the back. Their bloodline can be traced back to a car from over sixty years ago that was also very versatile. It even gave it its name. We are talking about the Volvo Duett, with which Volvo created a car that could serve as a workhorse during the week and could also be used for leisure at the weekend.

The Volvo Duett was just a bit more of a workhorse than the later Volvos we just talked about. In fact, he even started his life in a very utilitarian way. Volvo put a chassis cab on the market at the end of the 1940s, the 445, which although it had the front of the PV444, but unlike that cat back a ladder chassis. You could put something on the back yourself, for example a loading platform to make a pick-up, or a high structure with a roof to transform it into a van. However, Volvo decided in the early 1950s that it also wanted to offer a kind of van on that basis. That became the Duett. It turned out to be a golden opportunity and it was eventually even allowed to exist next to the Amazon until 1969.

The Volvo Duett that we have in front of us here thanks to AutoWeek forum member Afentoe dates from a few years before the end, 1966. You can recognize that it is a fairly ‘late’ example from the grille and the windshield. Early Duetts were still based on the PV444 in appearance and had, among other things, a split windscreen, this is already from the generation that resembled the PV544. However, we spot a detail that is much more modern than the car itself when we peek inside. It looks like it has relatively modern Volvo seats. By the way, it seems that it is an order version, because a back seat does not seem to be present, although it could of course have been removed at some point.