“I like unique things – the stuff that you don’t see all the time,” says Shant Yazijian of Pasadena, California. “When you keep seeing the same types of cars at shows, it gets kind of boring.”

A mechanic and fabricator by trade, Yazijian helps manage the day-to-day operations at his family’s auto shop, Bells and Vaughn. “A lot of it is collision repair, but we also do restorations, performance upgrades, and other customization work, too.”

Early on his career, however, Shant’s interests gravitated more toward engine machining, and he immersed himself in all things LS just as the rest of the world was beginning to wake to the potential of the platform. “This was around 2006, so it was really starting gain some traction in the scene, and I got to work on a lot of really cool cars at the time,” he explains. “But it wasn’t supported at the level it is now.”

That’s around the time that Yazijian started putting work into projects of his own as well, building a drag-focused ’98 Camaro that evolved from a quick street machine into more of a race car over time. “It was a really gutted, lightweight car and it ran on 29-inch slicks. But nothing crazy under the hood; just an LS1 with forged internals, heads, and cam kinda deal. It was a great toy, but eventually it wasn’t street legal anymore, and it became kind of a hassle to load it up and take it to the track every time I wanted to play with it.”

As a result, the car was mothballed while Shant focused his efforts exclusively on the projects at the shop for a time. Eventually, though, he found himself scouring Craigslist with an urge to build something new. “I’d never even heard of the Volvo Amazon – I was only familiar with the boxy ones from the '80s and '90s,” he admits. “But this ad caught my eye, so I went to go check it out. It was sort of a half-finished project with a lot of dated mods to it: funky grille, weird bumpers made out of square tubing, bright blue rally wheels. But I saw potential in it. And what really got me interested in it to begin with was the fact that it already had a V8 swap – an old Buick 215.”

Yazijian made a deal with the seller, brought the Volvo back to the shop, and set to work making his vision for the Amazon a reality. The first order of business was to get the existing 215 and the rest of the car road-worthy after fifteen years of neglect. “When I cracked open the 215, I saw that someone had done a lot of work to it – it had a bigger crank in it, individually sleeved cylinders, etc. And when I measured everything, it came out to 301 cubes, and I thought that was pretty cool. But the problem was that it was some mad scientist-type stuff, so reverse engineering everything took a long time. It took almost six months to source the crank seal because it was from a Ford tractor.”

And after he eventually got everything together, he fired it up for the first time only to discover that the engine was cracked behind the liner, which was allowing coolant to get into one of the cylinders. Frustrated, he decided to ditch the Buick V8 for something a little more lively and bit more contemporary. “Since I wasn’t racing the Camaro anymore, I figured that LS would be a perfect candidate for the Volvo,” he recalls.

But while the Buick 215 fit into the engine bay of the Amazon without much fuss, getting an LS in there took a bit more work. “The 215 was so small that they didn’t really have to do much to get it in there,” Shant says. “But even though the LS is only an inch and half wider, it was quite an undertaking to get it to fit into that engine bay. I had to push the firewall back about five inches, and then I had to move one of the fender wells out about an inch and a half to clear the exhaust. I wanted to retain the stock steering system because I liked the idea of it feeling like an old Volvo with LS power. So the motor sits offset to the passenger side by about an inch to make it all work.”

The LS1 is outfitted with a forged crank, pistons, and rods, a Comp Cams camshaft, LS6 heads that were worked over by the folks at West Coast Cylinder Heads, and an aftermarket intake manifold with a fabricated sheet metal elbow for a 90mm throttle body. The intake system combination was pieced together largely out of necessity – there just weren’t a lot of off-the-shelf options available when Yazijian originally started wrenching on the motor back when it was in the Camaro.

He retained the T-10 four-speed manual gearbox that was originally mated to the Buick 215 for use with the LS, and a GM 10-bolt rear end puts the power to the ground. With the LS now making an estimated 450 horsepower, it gets this 2500-pound Volvo moving in a hurry.

The chassis is currently a mix of new and old, with factory suspension components supporting aftermarket lowering springs, Bilstein dampers, and polyurethane bushings, while the Volvo’s factory front disc and rear drum setup handle stopping duties. “I had to cut about a coil off to get the stance I wanted,” he notes. “And I made an adjustable Panhard bar because clearances are really tight back there and I wanted to center the diff as well as I could to get the most out of this tire.”

The exterior aesthetic is a mixture of vintage and modern as well, with the Volvo sporting Corvair bumpers, a from splitter sourced from an Acura, and wheels from a Tesla Model 3. The theme continues inside, where fifth-generation Camaro SS seats are paired with factory switchgear and gauges. Yazijian also installed a four-point roll cage, which is color-matched to the Tesla wheels, to improve the car’s safety and rigidity.

“As soon as I pulled it into the lot at the first car show I ever took it to, everybody stopped and stared, ” he says with a laugh. “I parked it and a whole swarm of people came over to check it out. I didn’t even leave my car for at least an hour after I got there.”

It definitely turned plenty of heads at Holley LS Fest West this year as well, where Yazijian put the Amazon through its paces in the Grand Champion competition. “It was an action-packed weekend for sure,” he tells us. “I knew my car wasn’t going to be super competitive against some of the monsters that were out there; I was really just curious to see how it would do because I haven’t had to a chance to take it to the track yet. It’s not really geared for the drag strip right now, but I was really happy with how it handled in the autocross and road course events.”

And now he has his sights set on the next batch of upgrades. “The car has a long 2.73 gear out back, but with a four speed and a 25-inch tire, it’s still pushing high RPMs on the highway,” he points out. “But I found out about the AR5 transmission swap, which has short first and second gears as well as a fifth gear for overdrive, so I think that swap will address the challenges I’m having with the four-speed right now. I also want to upgrade to big brake setup in the front, and disc brakes in the rear.”

In addition to the Amazon, Yazijian also has another project in the works that he hopes to have ready for next year’s LS Fest West event. Most of the details of his latest endeavor are under wraps at the moment, but we do know that this one will blend American performance and Japanese design in ways that you might not expect. “I try to explain to people that I’m not a ‘Volvo guy’,” he says. “I’m not partial to one particular brand or style of car. I like everything – I just try to keep it interesting.”