Since the introduction of the Volvo duett in 1953, the vans produced by the independent coachbuilders in general was stopped. They couldn't compete with a van manufactured in all steel. The pickups however remained almost a decade longer. A car with a stakebed had the forecome to haul big loads that didn't fit in the duett. In the states the pickup was a common second car in many families.

Volvo tried to produce their own pickup and two prototypes were manufactured. Sad though, no serial production was started. The look of one of the chassis is clearly inspired by the american way of styling trucks. The other one, with smooth bed sides, was ment for a dam project in Canada but the project was never started.

This pickup from 1960 is a chassis for duetts with special designed body called P 21134 A. It's not a deliver chassis which is named P 21114 A. Why Volvo decided to let a regular chassis from a duett make the base for the pickup when the deliverchassis still were in production, has found no explanation. The differences between the two kind of chassis though is minimal. Several rebuildings of regular duetts to pickups were done by coachbuilders or in private after dropping the production of commercial chassis in 1962.

Information about these Volvo-produced vehicles is taken from the book " VOLVO - the cars from 1920 to 1980 " written by Björn-Eric Lindh. The books' ISBN number is 91-86442-06-6.

Published 2001-12-19