Wheezing through , Sweden, surrounded by a literal sea of cerulean velour, vinyl and polyester, , I felt like the disco era superstar I’d always longed to be. Pedestrians pointed and mouthed OMGs, with grandiose waves and pensioners scratched their balding heads, their muddled brains further addled by a distinct case of does-not-compute. It wasn’t me, obviously, it was the car: a black sapphire 1979 Volvo 264 TE that may as well on its front fenders.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, if you were a high-level East German functionary, and you needed a vehicle befitting your status, you had limited options. , western imports to the Eastern Bloc were forbidden and reviled as decadent, and Russian cars were, well, Soviet. “You couldn’t buy a Cadillac, or a Mercedes-Benz, and you wouldn’t want a Zil,” says Hans Hedberg, a veteran Swedish journalist who now runs Volvo’s heritage activities.
Perpetuating its decades-long performance as an ostensibly neutral country, Sweden maintained economic relations with some countries behind the Iron Curtain, and . So when head of state Erich Honecker and his core apparatchik minions needed a vehicle that expressed their exalted status, they came Sverige-ward, to the country’s largest carmaker. As a template for its executive adaptation, Volvo decided to use the recently-introduced, upscale version of , the 2.
7-liter V6-powered 264. Working closely with famed Italian Carrozzeria Bertone, it developed what may have been the l.