The early era
![Volvo 343 (1977) – Into the Wild Volvo 343 (1977) – Into the Wild](https://media.autoweek.nl/m/zs0yxbhb2cc8_800.jpg)
The Volvo 300 series is a car that you can probably mainly picture with yellow plates on it. However, it dates just from the time before those were introduced, although about 343 like this one with dark blue plates is really a rarity!
Over the years, some Volvos 343 and 345 have passed by in ‘In het Wild’, but this is the oldest. In fact, it is the first we saw with dark blue plates. This one from 1979 was just too late for that. So a nice spot. We thank Jente Horsting from the bottom of our hearts for photographing the 343 casually parked on the sidewalk.
It dates from 1977, the second year of sale of the 343 and the last year before the yellow plates became standard in the Netherlands. If the plates don’t make it clear that we’re dealing with a car from the 1970s, then the color of the car itself will. A wonderfully typical green-brown polish, a color that may evoke some dirty associations. It is probably still the original paint, although we see some different shades here and there. We will forgive the Volvo for that, because we are dealing with a 46-year-old car that otherwise looks neat. He didn’t age so beautifully without the necessary love.
The fact that it is a particularly ‘early’ 343 automatically means that it is one that still rubs very close to its Daf origins. Daf would have loved to bring a 77 to the market, but after the takeover by Volvo it eventually became the 343, initially with a typical Daf powertrain. A 71 hp 1.4 from Renault (a larger version of the engine that was already in the Dafs 55 and 66), coupled to the Variomatic automatic transmission. That makes this 343 as modest as it looks, a car that from the outset was supposed to be purely an easy means of transport and not much more. Nice that this one has become so old. The 343 has been with its current owner since last year, who, judging by the way it is parked, is not afraid to use it. Delicious right?
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl