Dan Johnston, our good pal at Volvo, recently told us the sad news of Gunnar Andersson’s passing on Tuesday, June 9; he was 82.
Gunnar was a mainstay in the international rally scene of the 1950s and 1960s behind the wheels of Volvo’s PV444, PV544 and 122 Amazon, and was a good natured competitor of Saab’s famous rally driver and brand ambassador, Erik Carlsson. He also influenced the founding of Volvo’s beloved high-performance ‘R’ line.
His life mirrored that of the automaker for whom he famously drove, in that he was born in the Swedish province of Dalsland on April 17, 1927, a mere three days after the first Volvo car, the ÖV4 ‘Jakob,’ rolled out of the factory in Gothenburg.
The Andersson family moved to Gothenburg when Gunnar was 10, and upon graduation, he joined the Swedish Air Force as a trainee aircraft technician, as well as selling and repairing pre-war cars in a rented garage. He came to competitive driving at age 26 in a roundabout way, as he explained in a 2001 interview:
In 1953, I came by a Jaguar XK120 and decided to enter an open driving skills competition in central Gothenburg. There were over a thousand entries, who had to complete ten different tests in a given time. Of those who passed the first nine, the winner was the driver who was fastest in the tenth. The tenth test was to reverse through an obstacle course. Since the Jaguar was fast also in reverse and since I had a clear view with the top down, I was the overall winner.
In 1957, Gunnar bought his first Volvo, a PV444, from the Gothenburg dealer, who fitted an ‘American spec’ twin-carbureted 85 horsepower B16B engine; this was the car that Gunnar started using in rallies and ice races.
He entered the European Rally Championship in 1958; the first rally was held in Greece, and he led the overall championship after only a few events. In Sweden, he won the Midnight Sun Rally with co-driver Ellemann-Jakobsen, and his was rapidly becoming a famous name. Volvo CEO Gunnar Engellau was quick to realize the marketing value of these triumphs, and Gunnar Andersson started to appear in Volvo’s marketing.
The famous photo of an airborne Gunnar Andersson in his PV444 during the 1958 Midnight Sun Rally. For marketing reasons, Volvo retouched this photo, making a later PV544 out of the 444 that Gunnar actually drove. This image of Gunnar jumping was used again more than 30 years later upon the introduction of the 1993 850, except the car’s original styling characteristics were left intact- see if you can spot the differences!
Gunnar was hired as an instructor at the Volvo Service School, but he was challenged to combine the job with his rally career, so he morphed his position to a combination of marketing and driving.
1958 was my best year, although I decided not to compete in the RAC rally in Britain since I had already won the overall European Championship. This is something I have regretted ever since – I would have been unbeatable and an RAC win is something special.
A win of the Swedish Track Racing Championship in 1959 showed that Gunnar and his PV444 had what it took as a private entrant, too, but being part of the works team was special;
I liked being a part of Volvo. It was fun to drive a Swedish car, especially far from home like in Argentina. And the Volvo crew had a fantastic team spirit.
The 1960 Gran Premio of Argentina, a 4,650 km endurance rally, was another fantastic win for Gunnar and Volvo, and although he wasn’t driving his PV – instead a Ferrari 250GT Berlinetta – he was the overall winner of the 1961 Mille Miglia.
Gunnar became the automaker’s competition department manager in 1962, although he continued to drive, and he capped his rally career with his overall win of the 1963 European Championship.
It was Gunnar’s establishment of the Volvo Track Racing Trophy race in 1972, in which 80 enthusiasts competed in their Volvo 140s, that eventually led to Volvo establishing a works team – The Volvo R-Team – to support the Dutch-designed 343 in rallycross events. That team developed the high performance components used on Volvo’s factory race cars, as well as those available over the counter for consumer purchase; the legacy of Gunnar’s racing wins was distilled into the company’s last high performance Rs, the 2004-2007 S60R and V70R.
Gunnar worked with Volvo as a product ambassador and test driver until his official retirement at age 65 in 1992, but he continued to travel for the company and to enjoy his own PV444, a car he built with a twin-Weber-carbureted, DOHC 16-valve Volvo engine.
Drive Safely, Gunnar…
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