Then a press release surfaced with a photo of the car, putting Volvo in a position where they had to acknowledge its existence. At this point Volvo had made no mention of the P1800 and the factory would not comment. This motivated Helmer Petterson to obtain financial backing from two financial firms with the intention of buying the components directly from Volvo and marketing the car himself. It began to appear that Volvo might never produce the P1800. Other German firms, NSU, Drautz and Hanomag, were contacted but none was chosen because Volvo did not believe they met Volvo's manufacturing quality-control standards. This setback almost caused the project to be abandoned. They feared that the P1800 would compete with the sales of their own cars, and threatened to cancel all their contracts with Karmann if they took on this car. But in February, Karmann's most important customer, Volkswagen VAG, forbade Karmann to take on the job. They were ready to build it and this meant that the first cars could hit the market as early as December 1958. Petterson and Volvo chief engineer Thor Berthelius met there, tested the car and discussed the construction with Karmann. Karmann's engineers had already been preparing working drawings from the wooden styling buck at Frua. Petterson hoped that Karmann would be able to take on the tooling and building of the P1800. In December 1957 Helmer Petterson drove X1, (the first hand-built P1800 prototype) to Osnabrück, West Germany, headquarters of Karmann. The Italian Carrozzeria Pietro Frua design firm (then a recently acquired subsidiary of Ghia) built from Sep 1957 to spring 1958 the first three prototypes, later designated by Volvo in September 1958 : P958-X1, P958-X2 and P958-X3, (P:Project 9:September 58:Year 1958 = P958) Volvo insisted it was an Italian design by Frua and only officially recognized that Pelle Petterson designed it in 2009. The design work was done by Helmer's son Pelle Petterson, who worked at Pietro Frua at that time. The man behind the project was an engineering consultant to Volvo, Helmer Petterson, who in the 1940s was responsible for the Volvo PV444. The project was started in 1957 because Volvo wanted a sports car, despite the fact that their previous attempt, the P1900, had been a disaster, with only 68 cars sold.
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