|
Iīm Joaquin Novara and live on Lima, Peru (South America). In advance, my excuses for write on spanglish (english words with spanish idiomatic rules).
Here, the 120 series was a Volvo's emblematic car from 60's to 70's (we had a military dictatorial goverment these times, and the import of new cars was no allowed. The next volvo car I see here was the 240 on the 80's).
I have one Amazon (on reality, two, but the second one was a donor car for the first and was scrapped). Both was 121, no 122 (the 121 was produced only for european, african, southamerica markets, not for US; 121 has 4 doors, 122 has 2 doors).
The car has a front seat bench and also had a column manual shift mount (I change it to the floor-mounted, due the column version was very troublesome on engage the 2nd gear- after the change the transmission work without a glitch!). My chasis number is 232598, one of the last 4-door sedan produced (year 1966).
I believe (a) the front seat was an experiment or (b) due was one of last sedans, it was a creative use of the remmants early parts on store (God knows).
The seat are rigid and donīt bend (with 4 doors this is unnecesary). On my first month with the car I hate the seat (if you adjust for your size, you move the passanger side, usually with the passanger seated; also the degree of inclination is adjusteable only using a screwdriver - in other words, adjust on the garage, and not move anymore). But, with time passes, I start to like it (a bit of feeling rememoring my grandfather's 50's car). Probably, this type of seat fit well also on the station-wagon (estate) version.
Additional notes:
Also, between other rarities, my car use a B18A engine with a single Stromberg carburator (without add-ins, by example, it lack the temperature compensator). The engine has 2.5% CO emissions, but it is well into the local enviromental laws (and we using here 84 leaded octane gas and a double headgasket - Hey tree-huggers, I live on a third-world-country and our enviromental laws allow 5% of CO! - due half of the car park has 10 or more years of use).
The Stromberg carburator work fine and develop a 10 Hp more of a SU carburator (I test both, the donor car has a SU - now my backup carburator). With the Stromberg I was capable of coax 180 Km.p.h. from the old beast (usually I use the car as my conmuter home-work-home with a mean speed of 40-60 km.p.h.). SU carburator has breathing problems at 130 km.p.h. (tested both outside the city).
|