SEMA 2006: Hotrod With a Volvo Heart

[George@Swedespeed]

Leif Tufvesson is one of Sweden’s most skilled specialist car constructors, with many of his cars having received serious international acclaim. The hottest of them all right now is the new Caresto V8 Speedster, a mid-engined car with an ethanol powered Volvo V8 unit. With the advent of the V8 Speedster, the term Sport Rod has been born. The car will be given its premiere public outing at the SEMA show in Las Vegas.

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[newie]

Hi George,

What a beauty!! However, the modifications to the C30's were just awesome!! For a 'Vegas crowd to be imressed with a Volvo is quite a mouthful!!!Now if they were only for sale....is someone from Volvo listening or reading this stuff?! The cars are the hottest thing I've seen in a long time, and IPD and other companies have certainy done their homework in modifications.
What a fun time you must have had at the SEMA show. As always, you've done a great job ingetting pictures of fab cars and the write up was great as well. Now all we can do is drool and wait until they come to our local Volvo dealer--I'm not holding my breath on this one, but I'd love to be proven wrong!!

Newie

[JBLasVegas]

I was at SEMA and was not impressed with the retro-rod. Chrysler had them beat hands down with the Prowler. At this point, Volvo is going through a "Me Too" stage.

[Nato740]

Yup BEEN THERE DONE THAT SEEN IT! Thou the Robins Egg Blue paint from my Aunts 74 142E was interesting. Wonder if it as well has Manual steering and 4spd trans with Electric OD.

[phuz]

that a prowler?

[kowalski]

Major difference being that this was a custom built affair from the mind of a creative individual exploring a typeform (open fendered roadster) that is still popular in the custom car culture but in a media that is unexpected (a Volvo). Volvo would not build such a thing because they are smart enough to realize that it would fail in the marketplace. The Prowler was a mass-produced design exercise from a corporation that could not or would not put one of their V8s into a car that was doomed in the market place as a niche-less novelty. Designs like this had been floating around the hot rod scene for years as refreshes of older hot rods were done with new car parts. Chrysler saw this and decided to go do it too. They were doing their corporate version of the "me too" thing. It just went to show that what works for the custom enthusiast crowd does not always translate well into production.

I like the car, but it is not as pretty as the one we saw last year with the I6 in it. He also had the opportunity to do something interesting with a rear window of some kind. Interesting custom nonetheless.