There's A Volvo Dealer In China With A 'Secret' Museum Above It

There are some great car museums dotted around the world, and if you’re not near enough to visit one you have an eye on, that’s often not a problem. It’s not hard to find heaps of pictures from the major ones dotted around the Internet, and many, like Stuttgart’s Porsche Museum, allow you to take a virtual tour via Google Street view.

You can’t do that with this Volvo museum in China, however. There are no online tours, precious little information, and when we checked, the only photos out there have gone offline. Happily, YouTube channel China Uncut (formerly Geely Uncut) has rectified this to give the world a good look at this overlooked museum.

It’s on the first floor of a Volvo dealership in Hangzhou, not far from the HQ of Geely, owners of the Swedish brand since 2010. From the sounds of it, the compact but the nicely thought-out museum isn’t well known to locals, let alone petrolheads in the west.

See also: This Car Graveyard In China Is Full Of Abandoned Exotics

It goes right back to the early days of Volvo with a 1927 PV 4, a tin-top version of the ÖV 4, the company’s first-ever car. Moving forward to the 1940s, we have the P444, and from the 50s, the legendary 120 ‘Amazon’.

Vying for the prize of the prettiest car there is a P1800 ES, although some might prefer the boxy beauty of the Bertone-designed 780. Speaking of angular things, just across from the 780 is the 850 Volvo campaigned in the 1996 British Touring Car Championship.

More recent vehicles include a C70 used in a side-impact crash test, and the 2014 Concept XC Coupe, a shooting brake version of the Concept Coupe. The latter, you might remember, evolved into the Polestar 1.

Have you ever been to a small and relatively unknown museum like this? Let us know in the comments.