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Many people seem to love this car, and if you manage to find a nice one it sure has some interesting features to make it stand out among the other cars in the 200-series.
Personally though, I find it a bit amusing that the GT is such a popular car today, considering the circumstances around its introduction. Please remember that in Sweden, it was (and is) a fierce and competitive struggle between the Volvo camp and the SAAB camp. Up to the late '70s, Volvo was generally considered the big and powerful car of the two makes, even if SAAB had had some rallying success. Then SAAB introduced the 99 Turbo in 1977. It was a sensation. Here in Scandinavia, every boy no matter age wanted one. Badly. With the SAAB Turbo, you could have a family car and a racer all-in-one. Volvo had effectively been degraded to second place in terms of must-have.
The 1978 242 GT was Volvo's reply. As a counter attack it was at the time considered a weak one, though. What they did, basically, was to put together rather stock parts from the shelf in a hurry, and add a few nice decals. The first year they put in an H cam for performance, but with the resulting rough idle and weak low end torque - and high emissions - it was later replaced by the K. (The US cars might have been different.)
It was meant at the time to work as an intermediate model to satisfy this particular customer segment until they could launch their own turbo-powered car. Which they did in 1981, and the GT was consequently discontinued.
I do not by any means mean to show disrespect with the words above. Many people love this car with good reason, and it is considered to have the best stock chassis set-up of any 200 series car ever made. As I am old enough to remember the model's improvised and hurried birth though, I am slightly amused by the status it has got as the years have passed.
You might say that Volvo got the last word, I guess.
Erling.
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My 240 Page
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