Autoblog

If a car's been sitting at a dealership for 34 years, you'd expect it to develop a certain amount of vehicular arthritis, in the form of brittle rubber, aged braking components and rodent havens. In the case of this Volvo 1800ES, originally owned by Gordon Turner, proprietor of Turner Volvo, it's recieved regular attention during the 10,000 miles it's accrued during its time as a demo car.

For the uninitiated, 1800s are the "exotic" vintage Volvo and nice examples can trade for several thousand dollars. This one's got a starting bid of $20,000 and the reserve has yet to be met.

More after the jump.

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This trio of Volvo C30 concepts greets every person entering the Ford display at the 2006 SEMA show. Our favorite by far was the C30 by Evolvo that's powered by a sequentially turbocharged version of the normal C30's 2.5-liter in-line five-cylinder engine, but producing 507 hp and 468 ft-lbs. of torque in its SEMA form. The rear two wheels have also been invited to the drivetrain party so that all four 19-inch Evolve "F1" Multipiece wheels (13-inch wide rears, as you can see) can be driven mad by the monster motor. The bodywork on the Evolve is particularly impresive. After the jump you can see that the C30's schnoz has been lengthened 6 inches and adjustable front splitters now flank the mighty nose. Out back the body has been widened to accomodate the larger rear wheels, which created a space above the rear fenders where Evolved rerouted the exhaust outlets. Very trick, very nice. There's also a serious spoiler perched atop the C30's signature hatch and a real, functional air diffuser below.

Check out the Heico C30 and the 400-horsepower ipd C30 with gull-wing doors. The latter looks like it's doing a passable impression of a Subaru Impreza Rally car.

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As you know, we were unabashedly impressed with the C30 when it debuted as a concept at the 2006 North American International Auto Show and were equally excited to see the production version lost little of the concept's charm. It turns out that Volvo is pretty excited about the C30 too, as the Swedish brand has turned three cars over to a triumvirate of tuners who will produce custom versions for the SEMA Show in November. The companies involved include ipd, HEICO SPORTIV and EVOLVE.

The first tuner is little ipd who will make a very big statement with its C30 concept (shown above) producing 400 horsepower thanks to a belt-driven supercharger. That delicious powerband is augmented with audio courtesy of Alpine and Apple. Handling is jacked up a notch thanks to a fully adjustable coil-over suspension system and the party will come to a stop quickly thanks to a big break package. And just for fun the ipd C30 is painted with a Swedish flag theme. Nice.

(Follow the jump for more details on the other two tuner Volvos and more renderings)

[Source: Volvo]