Rare military ‘pig’ of a Volvo for sale

July 20, 2023 by Alastair Sloane

Up for grabs at Australian auction house Collecting Cars is a rare Volvo built for the Swedish military.

It’s the four-wheel-drive TP21 Sugga, one of 700-odd examples produced between 1953-1958. Sugga in Swedish is ‘sow’, a reference to the vehicle’s pig-like looks.

This particular 1954 example has been in Aussie hands since the 1980s. It is rigged as a radio command car and comes with a roof-mounted antenna and some original radio equipment, including phone handpiece and generator. The odometer shows 31,718 km.

Under the bonnet is a 3.7-litre six-cylinder petrol engine developing 67kW at 3600rpm and a top speed of 90km/h. It drives all four 16-inch wheels via an unsynchronised four-speed E9 manual gearbox with vacuum-lockable front and rear axles.

TP21 Sugga also comes with twin jerry can holders, roof-mounted shovel and axe, rear-mounted spare wheel carrier, high and low range gearbox, escape hatch in the roof, fold-out rear bike rack, and tilting windscreen.

The vehicle is a hybrid of sorts, combining a reworked body from a Volvo 800-series sedan sitting on a shortened, fully welded frame from the company’s truck division.

The result is a vehicle with short front and rear overhangs for steep approach and departure angles, selectable four-wheel-drive, semi-elliptical springs and double-action telescopic shock absorbers, and four-wheel Lockheed drum brakes.

It might be nicknamed the ‘pig’ but it has always been described as a much more refined descendant of the World War II-era Volvo TPV, Volvo’s first serious foray into 4×4 development.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.