One cool set of wheels, baby
If life is a highway, jazzman Dan McMillion knows how to ride in style with his 1966 Volvo 1800S.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published January 21, 2005
TAMPA - Dan McMillion is best known as a Grammy-nominated jazz bandleader, but his wheels are every bit as cool as his music.
McMillion heads a highly acclaimed big band called the Dan McMillion Jazz Orchestra. The ensemble has five albums on the Seabreeze label, the country's biggest and most respected label for big-band jazz. One album, 2002's Got the Spirit, garnered a Grammy nomination.
There may not be a Grammy on his mantel ("We were in pretty good company that year," McMillion said of his competition), but out in the garage of his South Tampa home is something nearly as impressive: a 39-year-old Volvo sports car in mint condition.
It's cool enough that McMillion owns a cherry 1966 Volvo 1800S.
The 1800S is kind of legendary for a couple of reasons. It was one of only two sports cars that Volvo ever built and it was featured prominently in the 1960s TV show The Saint, driven by Roger Moore as classy adventurer Simon Templar. Sort of the equivalent of James Bond's Aston-Martin.
But most significantly, a guy in New York named Irv Gordon has an 1800S - a 1966 model, just like McMillion's - that he has driven nearly 3-million miles. It's a world record (Gordon and his car are listed in Guinness) and Gordon frequently appears on national TV when he reaches new milestones.
McMillion will have to get out on the road if he ever hopes to match Gordon's record. If he wants to get to 3-million miles, he's got another 2,970,000 to go.
"It has about 30,000 miles on it," McMillion said of his light-blue baby. "It came out of an estate in Minnesota. Apparently the original owner died shortly after he bought it in 1966. Then a collector bought and kept it in a warehouse."
It would be the ultimate "little old lady special," McMillion said, a car that was pampered from its first day out of the dealership and was hardly ever driven. But very few little old ladies drive hot sports coupes.
"It's not a restoration," he said. "Everything on it is absolutely original. It's the original paint, the original carpet, everything. It's the only one, probably, in the whole country that's like this."
Even before McMillion bought the car about four or five years ago, its pristine originality was impressive enough to land it on the glossy cover of Volvo Sports America, a national magazine for Volvo collectors.
What about accessories? You might expect that a famous jazz trumpeter might add a decent sound system, maybe an unobtrusive CD changer in the trunk and a decent set of speakers so he can groove to Maynard Ferguson as he tools down the highway.
Nope. McMillion's Volvo still has its original tiny, tinny speakers and its 1966-vintage AM/FM radio. That was actually pretty high-tech for a car radio back in the mid '60s, when FM was just emerging from its elitist classical closet.
Volvo offered the 1800S from 1960 until 1971, McMillion said. The company's earlier attempt to produce a sports car, the P1900, had been a flop in the 1950s.
"It was never too successful because of the fiberglass body," McMillion said. "It only lasted about two years."
The 1800S fared much better, thanks largely to a body designed by Pinin Farina, the famed Italian designer of Ferraris and other sports cars.
"It basically stayed the same from 1960 until 1971," McMillion said. "They changed the engine a little bit, but the body looked the same all the way through."
Another aspect of the 1800S that made it especially successful in this country was its reliability. Especially in those days, sports cars were known for being temperamental, and appealed largely to people who liked to get under the hood with a socket wrench every Saturday afternoon.
The 1800S was a little better-suited for the longer distances Americans drove, and for people who liked a more carefree driving experience.
"It was kind of aimed at the American market," McMillion said. "It was a sports car for people who didn't like to tinker. It's still very rare in Sweden, where it was built."
McMillion doesn't drive the car too much. It mainly stays in his garage. He'll take it out a couple of times a month, maybe around Davis Islands, "just to shake the cobwebs off."
But it's just a cool car to have, even if it sits in the garage. And McMillion figures it's making money for him every day it sits there.
When the car was new, it sold for under $4,000. When McMillion bought it about five years ago, he paid $6,000. If he were going to sell it today, he might ask $25,000.
"I don't drive it very often because I don't want to put too many miles on it," he said. "It's kind of an investment, but I'm going to keep it as long as I can."