John Wrench reached out to us in 2019 as he had just bought this 1980 Volvo 244 to restore. With all the paperwork was a Rudds Ltd receipt for a few parts. The car looks like it was sold new from the Southampton Volvo dealership. So by the time the first owner, a Mr Calvert who bought this car in January 1980, Rudds was more a service garage and Volvo authorised dealership.
John had spoken to a former technician at the dealership who had said:
”I started working for Rudds in 1976 as a Technician in the workshop. After a few weeks I learned a bit about the name 'Rudds' it was the name of the owner of the building….Ken Rudd. He used to be the founder of the brand Ruddspeed. They tuned Aston Martins and a few other makes including Volvo, mainly Amazons in the sixties, but we had a few 360's with Ruddspeed conversions fitted that used to come in for servicing.
We, (as company) were owned by several holdings. We had 3 sites, Twickenham, Croydon and Southampton. The last lot to own us was Pendragon Holdings. They were asset strippers! They didn't want the Southampton branch so at the end of December 1989 the doors shut for the last time and that was the end of Rudds in Southampton.”

Ruddspeed Serial Number: N/A

We would love to hear from anyone has more information on the car or would like to add to the history please feel free to contact us here at Ruddspeed.
Click on the images below to view at a larger size.