The Volvo B57 is a car from Volvo, built from 1966 to 1982, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 6.7-litre front-mounted I-6.
The story
Volvo B57 was a front-engined single-decker bus chassis manufactured by Volvo between 1966 and 1982. Since 1970 it was also available as the Volvo BB57, with the engine mounted on top of the front axle, giving the buses very little front overhang. The BB57 became a kind of replacement for the smaller B54, but as it was larger, the B54 got its true replacement later.
The predecessor to BB57, the B615 had gone out of production in 1965, but apparently the demand for such a model was so high that they had to bring it back almost half a decade later, as the B54 proved to be too small. Both B57 and BB57 could be built in three different wheelbase lengths: 5 metres (B57-50), 5.5 metres (B57-55) and 6 metres (B57-60). This chassis type was rare in the United Kingdom, but was quite popular in rural parts of the Nordic countries.
What is underneath
Power comes from 6.7-litre front-mounted I-6; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Volvo B715 (B57) / Volvo B615 (BB57); its successor was the Volvo B7FA (B57) / Volvo B7F (BB57); assembly was at Sweden. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Lamborghini Miura, the Dodge Charger, the Alfa Romeo Spider — 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 B57 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.