Volvo Elisabeth I

The Volvo Elisabeth I was a one-off concept car designed by Giovanni Michelotti and built by Vignale in 1953 on the chassis of a Volvo P445. Its lines can be recognised in the later Volvo Amazon, but it had a small triangular grille similar to the one on an Alfa Romeo. The businessman Gösta Wennberg was behind the project and first made official contact with Michelotti in Paris in 1952. The body was meant to be built by Ghia Aigle, but the drawings came from Vignale instead, and the work itself took place mainly at Carrozzeria Allemano in Turin. The chassis left no room for rear seats, which was probably one of the main reasons Volvo showed no interest in series production, although that had been Wennberg's original intention. The car was crashed at the beginning of the 1960s.