Here's Why I Think The Volvo C70 Coupe Will Be A Future Classic!

Listen up fellow Volvo Owners & Fans, Oh have I got something for you!!, here is why I think the MK1 C70 Coupe should be a Future Classic and why you should buy one as soon as possible!

The Volvo C70 was a 2 door 4 seat GT Style Coupe produced by the Swedish Manufacture between 1996 to 2005, the MK1’s came in two body styles - Coupes & Convertibles. The C70 was Volvo’s 4th Coupe after the 780 from the 80’s, the 262C and the absolutely gorgeous P1800 from the 60’s, it was produced to compete mainly with the likes of the BMW 3 series E36 and Mercedes CLK W208 in the then ever growing Coupe Market.

Now Volvo knew that to be successful, they had to build a car out of this world and they had to build something that could potentially take the crown from the Germans - so to make this happen, the management sent most of their product team to the south of France to test out the C70’s then rivals and report back once back in Sweden, This made the car a perfect all rounder, It could seat 4 in full comfort with plenty of space all round, it also had a relatively big boot and some rather powerful engines with some decent power to match too!

Now while we’re on the subject of performance, all the engines in the C70’s were the popular 5 Cylinder Units from the Modular family, at launch it only came with one engine - the well known T5! This Turbocharged beast had 240bhp & 240 Ib-ft of torque from a 2.3 litre 5 pot, it had a top speed of 155mph and could do the 0-60 sprint in the 6 second mark which was not just quick back then, it’s still quick even in todays standards, in years to come there was more engines available ranging from 2.0 - 2.5 litres, Turbochargers were also added into some of the other engines too significantly boosting power to around the 160 - 200bhp mark depending on engines, even though there was smaller engines available, the T5 was the daddy of them all!

To back up the monumental power of the T5, the chassis (codenamed P80) was from the ageing 850 but it was tuned by none other by Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR For Short) - thats right! this old mans Volvo was tuned by a very successful UK Racing team which had won many championships with all different cars in all different categories of racing, anything from F1 cars to Rover SD1’s. The last car they worked on before the C70 was none other than the Jaguar XJ220 Supercar which was one of the fastest supercars of the 90’s.

TWR & Volvo had been working together since the early nineties with the brilliant 850 Wagon & the Saloon in the BTCC series and while they may of not won every race they were certainly remembered during that time so when it came to the production of the C70, TWR knew exactly what they were doing.

Unlike a few manufacturers of the time who went to the likes of Pininfarina or Bertone, Volvo was one of the few who decided to design the car in house, The exterior was designed by none other than Brit Peter Horbury while the interior was designed by Mexican Jose Diaz de la Vega and the both of them designed a masterpiece, Peter was given free reigns to design a car he wanted to drive yet had to resemble a Volvo, the boxy lines of old were gone for square squat angles at the front & swoopy curves for the rear, for an in house design it really was a pretty little thing and was so un-volvo like in the way it looked, it looks like no other Volvo on the road.

Interior wise it is a very nice place indeed with Leather everywhere and a decent amount of equipment as standard, options included satellite navigation, electric memory seats, a sunroof, a 3 disc multi changer CD Player and to go alongside that a six disc multi changer which fits in the boot, you could easily get led astray with the options list on the C70’s and end up spending lots on one.

Price wise they started at about £25,000 and rose up to about £30k depending on spec, to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if some were up at about £32,000 all in for a fully specced one. Time however has been very kind to the MK1 C70 indeed - here is why they need to be bought right now before it’s too late!

For a start, Prices have dropped to around about £500 for a rough one to £2,500 for a well looked after one with low miles, on top of that, Insurance, Tax & General running costs are pretty reasonable too as is the reliability of them too, C70’s compared to other Volvo’s of the time are generally very well looked after so finding a good one is relatively easy to find, be careful however as C70’s do like to go through Tyres and Shocks relatively quickly, as always go for one with a full service history and a years MOT and has as many receipts as possible.

Considering that a C70 is a premium Coupe which is a rival to a CLK, E36 3 Series & an Alfa GTV, it works out to be a very good buy as unlike all it’s rivals which have recently started to go up in price, the C70 has stayed the same which means you can get a T5 for half the price of either a big engined CLK or E36 or an Alfa GTV6 which makes it an absolute bargain for what you get as a package.

I hope you learnt something about the forgotten C70 Coupe and got a better understanding of them, If you’re looking for a cheap executive Coupe and you don’t care about image or badge, I’d definitely look them up as a potential option over it’s rivals - take it from me, I own a ‘00’ C70 Coupe as a first car and it’s everything I could ever ask for!

Hope You Enjoy!

By Alex Jebson