REPRINT FROM ISSUE #20 1993
CLASSIC CAR PAGES
RAIDERS OF THE LOST RAUKS
Who could believe that something like this would form the basis for a sports car brand?
Not all Swedish cars are the same. Some of them are the complete opposites to each other. Take Rauk as an example. A renowned sports car manufacturer, cool, fast and light cars, not very practical though. Or take Volvo. Dependable, safe, practical and…to be honest, a bit clumsy and boring. And the Volvo of Volvos must be the Duett. Built between 1953 and 1968, it was the company car of choice in the 50s and 60s. A pure box on wheels. No need for a sleek design or sporty engines here. When you opened its rear doors, there was a huge gap that could swallow everything, and it could probably survive two nuclear wars without taking notice, seldom has a car been more of pure practicality and sanity than the Duett.
Yet they have more in common than you may think. What if I told you that the first RAUK was nothing more than a rebodied and hopped up Volvo Duett? Having his 3 year old Volvo Duett written off in 1956, Rune Andersson thought that the intact chassis could be rebodied with something more sleek. Inspired by the Chevy Corvette, he had his friend Urban Karlsson to build a fiberglass sports car body. But after multiple people had asked if the car was for sale, they decided to produce a small series, this time using a couple of brand new 445 rolling chassis from Volvo (the same underpinnings as the Duett had, you could still buy them without bodies in 1957 directly from Volvo). And there is part of a huge problem.
The six first RAUK cars (the 1956 original RAUK and the five 1957 RAUK PM1 cars that was built) were actually registered as Volvos since they used a Volvo chassis. You can’t find how many 1957 Rauks that is registered in Sweden by searching through the automobile registry. There simply was no cars branded RAUK in 1957 in the paperwork. And the history of the earliest RAUK cars have been partly unknown for a long time, even for the factory. Until recently, when the factory museum and Trafikjournalen started to dig deeper into the history of them.
One thing that made things easier was that the VIN numbers were in the factory archives and that all the cars had their original registration on Gotland, in the old system before 1973 when the vehicle register was turned into one single unit for all of Sweden. Searching for them weren’t impossible, it just required some work.
The original
This was how it all started back in 1956.
The first car, the pre-production model, was no problem at all - it was owned by Rune Andersson until 1983, when it was donated to the factory museum. In 1983, he made a replica for his own use and decided to save the irreplaceable original for the future. And in the museum it stands, never restored, just a well kept original car. Being inspired by the Corvette, the paintwork was of course Chevrolet Polo white, and the interior red. Lots of details differ from the later PM1 cars, this was built on an earlier chassis, meaning B4B engine instead of B16, it had the 3 speed transmission from the Duett instead of the 4 speed from the Amazon used in the PM1, and lots of details did differ.
But the most remarkable one is probably the De Soto grille. An unthinkable thing on the production models, yet it transforms the look into something interesting. From the front, a Corvette from a parallell universe.
PM1 number one
Same body molds, lots of improvements, lots of different detailing. The PM1 was a thriving step towards a car for small series production instead of being just a home built plastic bucket.
The first PM1 of course went to Urban Karlsson. When new, the car was finished in the popular metallic maroon that was available on the Volvo PV444. Unfortunately Volvo suffered from quality problems with the paint and replaced it with their non-metallic Ruby red. Since PM1 number 1 also was faded in just a couple of years, it got a repaint in the Ruby red in the early 60s. The vehicle was used by Urban Karlsson until his sudden and way too early death in 1970, at only 38 years of age. By then, it was decided to build up a small factory museum and the #1 PM1 was one of the first cars in their collection. The Ruby red paint was once again painted over, this time with a paint similar to the original metallic maroon, but with more modern paint than the 50s nitrocellulose that stood the test of time better.
PM1 number two
The fate of the second PM1 was unknown for years. The customer ordered it in Bogliq blue (RAUK did not have any own paint recipes by then and left that choice to the customer) with a black interior. It was taken out of service in the mid 60s and all traces of it was ending there.
In the late 80s, it was found inside a barn not far from the factory, in a horrible condition, but complete. The plans by the new owner was to restore it to factory condition and specs, seeing it as an important part of both local and automotive history.
Unfortunately it was burned completely in a tragic garage fire in 1991. Nothing was left to save of the car, and PM1 number two is gone forever, no question about it.
PM1 number three
Could this even be called the real car anymore? It is the pride and joy of Olav Lange anyway.
The third PM1 was a little bit harder task. Appearantly it was still in use (even if it had moved from Gotland to Stockholm) when we got the new license plates in 1973 and was moved over to the new vehicle register system. But shortly afterwards it seems to have been exported to Norway. Luckily the last owner in Sweden remembered the name of the buyer, and where it went. He was still alive and living in the same place as he did back then. So were a bunch of later owners too, and we managed to trace it to Olav Lange in Hamar that bought it in 1978.
An interview with him shows that very few parts from the #3 actually remains. The car was in a horrible state when he got it, and the restoration is screaming 70s a long way. The chassis was rusted to oblivion and replaced with the chassis from a 1964 Volvo Duett. Numerous cracks in the fragile fiberglass body meant that they used the original body just to make new molds for a replacement body. The engine is a B20 from a 1976 Volvo 240, complete with the new for the year M45 transmission and its short gear lever. Sure, it is not a bad choice for a sports car compared to the B16 and M4 transmission that it came with, but…
The exterior is mostly a shadow of what it was. Instead of the 1957 Ford “Woodsmoke grey” that was on the body the car originally came with, the paint is now Hillstrom tractor orange with a satin black bonnet. The bumpers are long gone and much of the chrome was just painted over with black or removed altogether since the condition left much to be desired. The wire wheels disappeared already before the car came to Norway and it was rolling on rusty steelies when Olav bought it. Now it sports a set of Shelby slot mags. The wood steering wheel is replaced with a cheap 70s leatherette aftermarket wheel.
Olav says that there is no plans for an original restoration, since there is nothing of the original left anyway. He built it the way he wanted it and he has no problem in using it as a daily in the summer when it is not too nice to put miles on. And in one way, maybe he is right.
But of all the colours you could choose, Hillstrom tractor orange?
Crazy norwegians indeed.
And the question remains, is this the #3 or is it a replica? Or since the “replica” looks nothing like the original #3, is it something else than a replica?
PM1 number four
This was the car that we thought was going to be the easiest task. It is actually the only PM1 that is still registered in Sweden except for the PM1 on the RAUK museum. The only thing that was needed was to call the current owner, right?
A phone call resulted in a very angry man at the other end of the line, that says that he does not own a RAUK.
“Well, this is a very early RAUK, still registered as a 1957 Volvo 445…”
“I am not interested in talking to you, and don’t call me ever again, thanks!”
Being very surprised by the result, we tried to call the previous owner that sold the car to him in 1989. It turned out to be the son of a hoarder, that sold off the whole collection of project cars he had after his death, about 50 of them. He was not into cars himself and did not remember any RAUK.
“It was still registered as a 1957 Volvo, the license plate said…”
“Yes, now I remember that car. The papers said Volvo, it did not look like a Volvo, but I sold it as a Volvo. A very strange Volvo. Why is a RAUK registered as a Volvo anyway?”
After convincing him that it was all in order and that he did nothing illegal by selling it and that the papers was right, we got the answer that he indeed had sold it to the very angry man in Jönköping. So what was so sensitive about this then?
Well, we heard some rumours from vintage car people in that area, that we guess are true until we are convinced otherwise. It turns out that the man was restoring a Volvo Duett and bought it as a parts car. He was sure that someone had put some kind of kit car body on a Volvo Duett chassis. Since he had some aggressions against that “ugly kit car body”, he smashed it into smithereens with an axe.
In 1989.
There was still some possibility to save a very rare and very early RAUK only four years ago. Now, it is too late. And the same rumours says that the chassis parts he didn’t use is used as landfill.
When we told people that it actually was the fifth car that RAUK ever built (or fourth, if only counting the production cars) they got dead quiet and say that if he had known it, he would never have forgiven himself. And we somewhat get the idea that he had realized what he had done already before our phonecall.
According to the factory archive, it was painted Volkswagen Stratos silver. And probably it still had its original paint, due to the former owner remember it as being a dark shade of silver.
PM1 number five
While we could trace the first four PM1 cars very easy, we thought that number five was going to remain a mystery forever. It disappears from the registrations already in the early 60s. The former owners are all dead and their relatives does not remember any RAUK.
The only conclusion was that it was probably junked in the 60s. Long gone and forgotten by everyone. I was almost going to write this article up as a failure. Almost willing to convince to the RAUK factory museum that there seems to be no sign of the PM1 number 5 anywhere.
Then one day, the unthinkable happened, when I was least expecting it. Me and a friend was starting to get a bit nostalgic. We started going through some black and white photos of when he was visiting San Fransisco in 1973. And then, on one photo…
I did not believe it. Since there was no chance that any of the other PM1 cars should have been in SF in 1973, this was it. In a corner of a fuzzy B/W photo, I was able to identify that car as a RAUK PM1 and it really could not be anything else than the missing number 5 car. But what had happened to it the last 20 years?
The detective work was of course intensive. SF is big and there is more than one automobile club in the era. Let’s just say that after some intensive work as a bloodhound (and a vintage car enthusiast that have gotten some connections all around the world), we managed to trace it to Arnie Petersen, that has owned it since 1968!
The number 5 PM1 still exists, in an unbelievably good condition!
How it got to the US is something he has no clue about. When he bought it it was just a quirky european sports car among others, but it was well taken care of. And Arnie is a man that takes care of his stuff. It still wears the IP Ebony black that it was painted from the factory, and it still shines. Everything works, everything is there. And it probably have doubled in value many times. Arnie actually had no idea about how rare and early this car was, RAUK was largely unheard of in the US until the late 60s or early 70s anyway. But as always, expect to find the things you are looking for in the last spot you will be checking.
So, now the early RAUK history is more or less clear. They actually do exist (barely, though) even outside the RAUK museum. And the idea from Rune Andersson and Urban Karlsson is kept alive.
The idea to rebody a Volvo Duett into something fun, that grew into being a renowned sports car manufacturer.
(OOC, the article basically wrote itself in my head when starting up the RAUK brand, so sorry about the self-promotion but I just couldn’t let it be, and it is a bit of introduction to the brand too.)
Have patience.
