Bertone

“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.” Ogden Nash

It really makes me wonder what the photographer of the original picture had in mind, when he placed a rather large dog in the rear seat of the Volvo 262C? Is it possible that he wanted to illustrate that dogs are good companions and like to travel in Volvos? Good idea, but judging by the dogs’ rather sad face he might have actually prefered to ride in a 265 station wagon.

The original picture was on my hard drive for more than a decade. The first try on modifying this vehicle is just as old – and was horrible. So I saved it and forgot about it. A chance encounter with a 262C on the Autobahn last week reminded me of the old file and I openened it in Photoshop again… only to delete it minutes later. After a quick search for the same picture with better size and resolution, I started to modify it again. This time around I changed a vital part that I didn’t think about ten years ago: the rear fender. The Volvo 200-series cars have a rear fender cutout that prohibits lowering the car without looking odd, because the upper part of the wheel disappears behind the sheetmetal. Once that was fixed I selected a set of wheels with period correct design, lowered the car, modified the front spoiler and added the black stripes.

It took ten years to finally finish this one, but now I’m happy with the result. If you have any suggestions what could be done differently or better, please let me know in the comments. Thank you in advance.