Brand loyalty starts young, and often, it’s less about the badge, and more about the memories they evoke. For Greg Carnforth, the automotive moniker tied most closely to his heart strings is Volvo. The Swedish car-maker was his mother’s favorite, and the apple certainly didn’t fall far from the tree. “My mother, from the early 1970s on, had Volvo wagons, and I’m just in love with them- they’re tanks,” said Carnforth. “When my three kids came of age, each one of them had a [Volvo] 240 wagon.”
Volvo’s have synched an inarguably solid rep’ among the auto crowd as a reliable, safe, and relatively indestructible form of transportation. Sporty and stylish? For most–true or not–those descriptors aren’t synonymous with the brand. Carnforth’s build puts that stigma to rest. We love different and “this” is “that.”
The build began as so many do, with a cursory search through eBay. “I was looking for something to build, and I wanted a street rod,” said Carnforth. “I live in Louisville, Kentucky, where the street rod nationals have been for about 10 years in a row. It’s a good street rod scene around here.”
He happened across a Volvo Amazon wagon, and the project wheels started turning. “It’s a cool old car, but the only problem was that they only came in a 4 door. That’s a little cooler now than it was three years ago.”
The Amazon was located in Waco, Texas, and serendipitously, Carnforth had some work out that way. His day job is building stainless steel rooftop pools for hotels and casinos–the exact kind of day job you’d expect from a guy that built (and now flies) an airplane in his basement. No, really–it’s a Van’s RV7 that cruises at 190 MPH!
“I called my brother, who’s my partner in crime–he’s quite a bit younger than I am. He’s got a lot of style, is a good fabricator and grew up in the circle track scene with me. I told him, ‘I found this car, it’s almost rust free, but it hasn’t run in a couple years. How about I split the cost of the ticket and we fly down and see how far we can get it back. We’ll rent a truck and trailer if we need to.’”
The seller got the car fired and met the Carnforth boys at the airport in Dallas. What began as an internet project car search had snowballed into a thousand-mile, four-state road trip in a car that hadn’t run in years. What could go wrong? Against all odds, nothing.
“We had a blast,” laughed Carnforth. “It was OK at 55mph, but it had quite the shake and rattle at 57mph. We stopped by Gas Monkey and drove through Memphis. I have a picture in front of the Gibson Guitar.”
Once back in Kentucky, the car was lowered via a spring chop and some additional miles were added to the odometer cruising between local shows and events. That didn’t last long. The tiny hot rodder on Carnforth’s shoulder was awash with ideas, and soon the car was completely cut apart.
“This was a unibody car and before you knew it, I had all that cut out of it and had a chassis built and underneath it,” he said. Carnforth and his brother were circle track racers at heart and that fabrication knowledge was put to use building a custom frame and suspension for the Amazon. “The chassis was the most challenging aspect of the build. I’m big on getting the geometry right,” said Carnforth.
All of the fabrication was done in-house by Carnforth and his brother. For the powertrain, a crashed 2004 GTO gave up its LS1 and T56 transmission. The engine was augmented with a rebuild, a Texas Speed cam and head package, and an LS6 intake manifold. It made 473hp and 456 lb-ft of torque on the dyno at Auto-Motion in Louisville, Kentucky.
Function is key, but no street rod is complete without a little of the owner’s personality. After the heart transplant, the car went under the knife again where Carnforth gave it a door-ectemy, removing the rear pair and smoothing the metal seamlessly. “I noticed that the architecture on the front doors of a coupe were the same as the wagon, so I cut the back doors off and took a sawzall to it,” said Carnforth.
He made filler panels and used wooden bucks to flawlessly craft the swap. Next in line was a trip to Danny Taylor Automotive Art where the Amazon receives a glossy splash of color.
The last stop was LB Interiors where the original seats were reupholstered along with all of the interior panels. The wiring was updated with a Painless harness and the radio was deleted because “you can’t hear it anyway,” said Carnforth.
So what’s it like to drive a V8-powered Volvo Amazon? Few will ever know, but according to Carnforth, “It’s been a blast! My favorite part is that it’s a Volvo. It’s been a part of my family and my mom’s still around. It’s a bit of a tribute to her. The miles are racking up and the Volvo has turned several heads–including ours– at automotive events across the country; soon to be “countries” as the Volvo has been invited to the Power Big Meet in Scandinavia (one of the world’s largest car shows) where it will momentarily return to its roots.
Greg wishes to thank his brother and style consultant Chris Carnforth, and welder extraordinaire James Gamaelius for their invaluable help with this build.
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