Is The Volvo 164 A Retro Design?

The world of automotive design, like so many things in life, relies heavily on the concept of intent. If something looks like the designer wanted it to look that way, then that’s a victory, at least in part. That’s also what makes the concept of “retro” so interesting. A retro design can only really be considered retro if the intent of the designer was to specifically reference the look and feel of a specific time in the past, and translate that into the contemporary design vocabulary. Or, to put it more simply, did a car designer want the car to kinda look like an older car? In like a retro sort of way?

This is what I’m wondering about with the Volvo 164: can we consider the design of the 164 to be a retro-style design? It has some visual elements that certainly have a retro feel, but was that the designer’s intent? Let’s look a little deeper at the 164 and see if we can figure this out.

The 164 came about as a way to take the midrange Volvo 140 more upmarket, a process that included making room for Volvo’s new inline-six engine. The body from the A-pillar back was the same as the 140, so designer Jan Wilsgaard didn’t have to re-design everything, just the hood, fenders, front end, and so on. With that in mind, let’s look at the design of the 140, which Wilsgaard also designed:

The 140 design was what set the template for Volvo design for several decades to come; it introduced the unashamedly boxy look for Volvos in 1966, which was a significant departure from the curvier Amazon that preceded it. It was a very rational, clean look, unencumbered with ornamentation, and was quite modern for the time. The front end kept with this very clean, simple theme, with a pair of round sealed beam headlights, a stamped aluminum grille panel, and not much else.

The 164’s face is the most significant departure from the 140, with fenders that have a curve that conforms to the round headlamps, an inset, square-ish grille that the hood conforms to, and a pair of round horn grilles/driving lamps. Oh, and some funny turn indicators that sat atop the corners of the bumper, strangely non-integrated into the body.

The look of the 164’s face comes directly from a Volvo concept car/styling exercise, the T358, which Wilsgaard designed back in 1958, a full decade prior to the release of the 164:

It definitely feels upmarket, which was the intent. The T358 was a concept for an swanky V8 Volvo sedan that never quite made it to market. It feels almost British, which is a particular kind of upmarket. There even seems to be some specific British cars that Wilsgaard may have been influenced by when designing the 164, like the Wolseley 6-99 (any direct influence is purely speculative, of course):

There’s definitely a resemblance there; I’m also reminded of the Rover P5:

I think there’s a definite influence there, and both of these cars are from around the time of the T358 concept car, the late 1950s to early 1960s. That does seem to suggest a retro-ish motive in the design of the 164.

But if we look at other contemporary upmarket cars that this Volvo was intended to compete with in 1968 or so, we can see that this general sort of look – prominent upright grille, separate headlight pods, chrome trim, and so on – was present on cars of that era, too. Like on the Mercedes-Benz W114:

I wouldn’t consider the Mercedes-Benz a retro design, though; it was more of an evolutionary type of design, with elements that Mercedes-Benz designers had been gradually refining over the years.

So, I think you could argue that some of the basic traits of the 164’s look were contemporary as well. But, if we consider the cleaner look of the 140 in relation to the 164, I think it’s clear that the 164 was definitely a deliberate step backwards, in the interest of making some kind of link to “tradition” or something like that.

And this brings us back to my original question: can we consider the 164 a retro-look kind of car? I think it could be. I think we tend to think of mass-market retro cars as an hallmark of the late ’90s to early 2000s, with cars like J Mays’ Volkswagen’s New Beetle or the re-born Thunderbird or the new Mini, but maybe the retro phase had a tentative start 20 years earlier?

I’m still not entirely sure how I’d choose to categorize the 164. I’ve always liked the design, and I’ve always felt it was sort of out of character for Volvo. Thinking about it in the context of a deliberately retro design makes it a little more interesting, I think. It also feels oddly whimsical for normally stoic Volvo, so I appreciate it in that context as well.

Is this an obvious thing? Am I overthinking things? Is it important? I mean, of course it’s important. Vitally so. Maybe now more than ever. So let’s take a poll here; is the 164 just a design that uses some traditionally upmarket-coded elements, or is it a deliberately retro design, as in almost playfully re-appropriating old design motifs, but with an updated design language?

Help me work through this.