The Volvo 164 is a 4-door saloon from Volvo, built from 1968 to 1975, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 3.0L B30 I6. Jan Wilsgaard drew it.
The story
The Volvo 164 is a 4-door, 6-cylinder luxury saloon unveiled by Volvo at the Paris Motor Show early in October 1968 and first sold as a 1969 model. 146,008 164s were built before the car was succeeded by the mid-size luxury 264 in 1975, although some sources state 153,179 were built). The 164 was Volvo's first venture into the luxury segment since the end of PV 60 production in 1950, and was the first six-cylinder Volvo since the PV800 last produced in 1958.
What is underneath
Power comes from 3.0L B30 I6. It weighs 1451 kg. It shifts through a 4-speed Volvo M400 & M410 transmission / Volvo M400 Manual transmission / manual / 4-speed Volvo M400 & M410 transmission / Volvo M410 manual with overdrive / 3-speed Borg-Warner 3. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2700 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Volvo 264; assembly was at Torslanda. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Peugeot 504, the Toyota Hilux, the Pontiac Firebird — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Volvo catalogue sit the Volvo 144 and the Volvo 264 TE.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Volvo 164 has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.