The Details
Volvo 242 GT
A four-year restoration, two brothers and the unlikely Swedish GT that turned a family joke into an obsession.
- Words & Photography
- Nathan Duff
- Owners
- Rod and Clayton Wilson
I pull into a quiet residential street, turn the music down and scan the old brick letterboxes for a number matching my scrawl on an old fuel receipt. No need really, I spot the only house with a Volvo parked out the front about half way down.
It’s a warm afternoon and brothers Rod and Clayton Wilson are perched on the veranda when I arrive. They’re admiring the view of the Swedish siren parked at the curb. It’s not the car I’m here to see but one of the many Swedes that reside here. Rod’s daily is a 1998 S70. His son, Jarrod, has an 850 R wagon and an 850 T5. Add to that a couple 242 GTs out the back (one that has been meticulously restored) and you begin to understand the love the family has for the somewhat underappreciated marque from Gothenburg.
The brothers fondly recall early days on their family property on the east side of Brisbane, thrashing paddock bashers within an inch of their lives and resurrecting them as a means of their mechanical education. It’s evident that they bonded over cars from an early age.
“One day Dad turned up at home with an old Austin A40 when I was 11,” recalls Rod. “God, we used to tear around in that thing. The old man said ‘if breaks down you gotta fix it’, so we learned the hard way. I reckon by the time I was 12 I knew how to put an engine together.”
Clayton got his hands on an Austin A40 Farina, “...which would be worth a truck load these days,” he laments. “I used to tow a Customline bonnet behind it and dare my mates to get on it and go sledding – they all survived surprisingly.”
“Dad loved trucks and bikes, but he also had a somewhat eclectic taste in motor vehicles,” admits Rod. “A Rambler Cross-Country station wagon, Pontiac Strato Chief ‘54 and an Austin Lancer.” It wasn’t your typical Ford or Holden household.
Rod purchased his first Volvo, a 1978 244DL, in 1982. “It held the road and went from point to point beautifully, but the body roll was alarming!” he said. “You had to be careful you didn’t take the door handles off going around a corner.”
“Even though there has always been a diverse mix of cars in the family doesn’t mean we didn’t bag the shit out of him when he bought that Volvo,” laughs Clayton.
“Yeah, copped heaps from all of my drag racing mates over that Volvo,” Rod admits. “My mates still give me a hard time about owning a Volvo... until they get in it. Volvos are the best kept secret.”
500,000 KM
“no problem at all”
250,000 KM
“still being run in”
Clayton nods in agreement. “Volvo engines will go 500,000km, no problem at all. Anything under 250,000km we consider them still being run in.”
Claytons introduction to the marque came via his step son, Wayne, on the lookout to replace for his worn-out Holden Barina. He was intrigued by the 242 GT and although Clayton had never been near a Volvo in his life, he was open to the idea of having one in the family.
Admittedly a Volvo isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you mention a two-door GT sports sedan from 1979. You say Volvo (usually prefaced with “Bloody” in Australia) and people think boxy, slow, safe or all of the above. The 242 GT was an effort to skew public perception of what a Volvo could be. The old advertisements touted it as an affordable, reliable and responsive sports car. With slogans like ‘Top of the line performance car with a bottom line edge’ and ‘If it had wings, it’d fly’.
While the performance stats of the 242 GT may not match those of the Aussie muscle cars of the same era, it was never designed to compete on that level. However, the power assisted steering and MacPherson strut front end gave it surprisingly responsive handling.
- 1979
- 2.3 L B23E
- 15-inch alloys
- 242 GT
Clayton discovered this driving Wayne’s newly-acquired 242 GT back from Mount Tamborine through the undulating twists and turns of the mountain road. “I was actually a little bit surprised at how well it drove,” he reveals. By the time Wayne reached the bottom of the mountain, he had a new appreciation for the seductive Swede.
They affectionately referred to their newly acquired 242 GT as ‘Bjorn’.
Shortly after, the idea for a restoration project germinated while sourcing mirrors for Wayne’s GT. During the search, Clayton came across a pair of 242 GTs for sale and floated the idea with Rod. “I was already aware of the GT – I always thought they were an interesting looking car because of the stripes,” says Rod.
“I always knew Rod and I would build a car together,” Wayne added. “We thought it was going to be a Torana, Kingswood or Brougham – something like that. Never thought it would be a bloody Volvo.”
“That’s when the madness started,” laughs Clayton. Two more Volvos had been added to the family. One was only good for parts and was christened ‘Agnetha’, but the other was tidy and complete, and now known as ‘Benny’. Mamma Mia!
The 242 GT was only produced for three years and about 600 examples were imported. It was the first sports car offering since the P1800 and came with an increased 2.3-litre version of the B23E found in the 244. This particular one is automatic, but most of the other GTs were four-speed manuals. A front spoiler and 15-inch alloys were added to enhance the sporty feel of the car. Cosmetic changes included black and orange ‘Speed Stripes’ applied to the silver body work that wrapped over the boot of the car.
The interior scored additional treatment with the orange striping continuing across the dash, door panels and the plush corduroy seats. An all-black interior and a smaller GT-badged steering wheel rounded out the cabin.
There were only a few minor cosmetic differences during its production. While the 1979 model had a space-saver spare and a bib-style front spoiler, the 1980 models had a splitter-style spoiler, full-sized spare and redesigned side mirrors.
“We never intended to do a ground up restoration – it just turned out that way,” Rod says. “When we started, we just pulled one thing off, then another. Before we knew it, it was just a bare shell. There wasn’t another bolt left on it you could undo.”
One of the unique challenges was the mix of bolts sizes underneath. Sweden went metric in 1974. Volvo had a stock pile of AF bolts they needed to use up before moving on to metric and it wasn’t until the early 90s that Volvo ran out of AF bolts. Clayton would need to equip himself with metric, imperial and Whitworth sockets and spanners every time he got under the car. “It drove me bloody mad!” says Clayton.
“People say Volvos are heavy, but that shell – four people could pick it up comfortably,” explains Rod. “It’s the doors that have the weight. It easily takes two people to carry the doors. When you see it stripped down to a shell like that, you realise the way it’s put together; it’s like it has a roll cage built into it.”
“We farmed out what we had to but took a lot of pride in what we could do ourselves,” Clayton adds. “Between us, what one couldn’t do the other could.”
The engine underwent a full mechanical rebuild by the ‘Norse God of Volvo’, Peer Skaarup, at GLT car centre Capalaba. The gearbox has had only minor adjustments.
4 Years of Sunday afternoons
The brothers had a few minor issues hampering completion of the GT. “After getting the car back from the painters, we noticed after a few months that the boot was a different colour,” says Rod.
“The rear beaver tail had to be re-built as well, but it wasn’t done correctly resulting in the tail lights no longer fitting,” says Clayton. “It set us back a fair bit, we got it fixed again, but we still weren’t happy.”
As fate would have it, a trip to a local car show was the solution to both of these issues. “We had just arrived for the show when ‘splat’ on the ground beside me, a bloody hail stone the size of a golf ball,” Rod recalls. “There was mass panic and we all scattered. I got stuck in the thick of it before I could get to cover, but the damage was already done. We had it repaired under insurance and paid a little extra to re-do the rear beaver tail panel and thankfully was done correctly this time.”
The restoration took four years of Sunday afternoons and a fair share of cash. “Do you want the true figure?” grins Clayton. “Or the figure I tell my wife? There are probably things we could have done more easily and spent less money, but it was a good way of finding things out. We just had a bloody ball doing this thing. It’s always good to have someone like your big brother that you know and get along with so well to do something like this.”
At one stage they had four 242 GTs. The ‘full Abba’, as they refer to it. ‘Anni-Fred’ had been purchased for $300 from the spare lot beside their sister’s house. “The guy mowed the lawn one day and there it was – it had been there all that time,” laughs Rod.
Clayton’s first experience in the GT hasn’t been diminished with time and he is gently reminded of it whenever he takes their freshly restored GT out for a drive “I took the long way home from the Volvo nationals at Warwick just after we had finished the restoration. Coming down through Cunningham’s Gap, I could hear the engine note echoing off through the valleys and hills and it handled the twisty road beautifully. I just thought, this is how to live; me and my Volvo.”
