Only in Sweden: Sightseeing Tours in Vintage Volvos

Beautiful scenery in Gothenburg, Sweden (Photo: Thinkstock)

During a recent weeklong trip through Sweden, more than a few things happened that left me scratching my head and thinking,only in Sweden: There was the coastal town where the parking meters weren’t working, so users were on the honor system to write down their arrival time and leave it on their dashboard; and then there was the guy who stripped down to tight white shorts and knee socks, asked a passerby to paint his torso blue, and finished by putting on a Smurf cap. This is, after all, a country where people are honest, are trusting, have a sense of humor, and are not hung up about looking silly.

But the most culturally distinctive of these “only here” moments, and the one that my Swedish hosts are undoubtedly the most proud of, came when I found myself in the back seat of a 1957 Volvo on a city tour of Gothenburg run by Time Travel Sightseeing. Time Travel’s sales pitch: “Come along on an exciting trip through time in ‘the Swedish People’s Car.’ ” Their six tours per weekend sell out.

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Nearly every person among the 15 in my group spoke Swedish, leading me to conclude that the national interest in the decidedly unboxy but squat and rather silly-looking Volvo PV 444/544, which was manufactured from 1947 to 1965, still runs high. It was this car that put Sweden on the road and put Gothenburg, the west coast city where Volvo still has its headquarters, on the map. (Fun fact: To this day, every American who buys a new Volvo still gets a free trip to Sweden to take delivery and drive around the Swedish countryside before the company ships it across the Atlantic.)

For the trip, our guide showed up dressed in a period costume — a tweed jacket, a newsboy cap, and a neatly trimmed mustache — with a vintage suitcase full of 1960s accessories and told us each to wear one. No one hesitated putting on the silly scarves and hats. Then we hit the road. The guide led the caravan, speaking into a radio (in Swedish and English, if there’s demand) that all of us could hear as we followed along in our respective cars, in an orderly, Swedish fashion.

Cruising through Gothenburg, Sweden

(Photo: Emma Lökholm)

Once everyone gets the driving down — that’s not always easy, and one of the cars in my tour proved so difficult to start that we had to go back to get a replacement vehicle — the tour, chugging along the E6 motorway as trucks fly by, turns out to be a good introduction to “Sweden’s second city” (as the maritime center of Gothenburg is known). The two-hour drive winds through the city center and interesting neighborhoods, and past most of the landmarks, such as the massive port, where the enormous Stena Line ferries dock, and the Avenyn, the wide, café-lined boulevard that’s essentially the Champs-Élysées of Gothenburg. There’s also a lengthy detour around Volvo’s extensive production facilities, of course. (Thankfully the tour doesn’t stop there, only at parks and scenic overlooks, which better lend themselves to photo-ops and cigarette breaks.)

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The guide’s running commentary includes a lot of “when these cars were new” and references to an album in the back seat of each car, containing archival photographs of 1960s automobiles and shiny new bridges and highways — and, my favorite, an early advertisement from the ’60s that shows two women in a Volvo, dressed for travel, the implication being that a Volvo is so easy to drive, even a woman can do it.

The waterfront in Gothenburg (Photo: Thinkstock)

The tour also includes a good bit of insight into the city’s more recent development, its initiatives to become even more progressive (if not entirely bike friendly — this is Volvo HQ, after all) — and, not least, what it says about a culture that dreamed up this tour and whose citizens are eager to keep its oddball operator in business. And as silly as it is, the whole thing is more than a little fun.

Time Travel Sightseeing tours leave every Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m., noon, and 2 p.m. from the Novotel Göteborg in the picturesque Klippan neighborhood, an easy ferry ride from the city center. Visit timetravelgbg.se for more information and booking.

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