Nosi
This is just an intro to say hi and tell my Volvo history.
( I wasn’t sure what section to put this, so its a project on my 1985 240. Pics to come when I work that out)
I’m 50+ years old and live in Bundy.
Current Volvos – xc90 that’s my wife’s daily drive, 1985 manual 240 that will soon be my daily drive. My daughter has a 940 as does my son. He also has a 242gt. My parents drive a v70.
Interests- apart from Volvos and family related – building/homes, homebrewing, history particularly ww1, karting, F1 , writing crap.
I have had approx 40 registrable cars and bikes over the years, but this is my Volvo history only. In around 1994 I bought a red 244 auto. In around 1996 for work reasons I needed a van, so sold the 244.
In around 1997 I bought a late 740gl, white, as a family car. During the couple of years we had it, a gearbox replacement was needed. It was replaced by a new company car in 1999.
In approx 2002 I needed a cheap wagon. I got a 245gl with well over 300000km on it. I did some basic maintenance and cheap modifications, and it was an excellent cheap workhorse. Several years later I got a new company car ( 4wd wagon ) so I discarded the 245.
In approx 2004 I helped my father buy a late model v70. He still has it.
In 2007 we bought an xc90 as a family car, which we still have. It is excellent for a modern car, except that it chews thru tyres. I have fitted a front camber kit which helps. ( 2 deg neg pass side, 1 deg neg drivers side )
After having 30 plus cars by this time of my life, I realised that if I had just bought one good car early on, and maintained it, I would have been financially a lot better off. So when my kids got old enough, I bought then both matching 940 gl ‘s. These don’t count as ‘my cars’, but I do maintain them. Both have approx 185000km and are brilliant cars.
My son inherited a passion for Volvos, and decided that as much as he likes the 940, he would prefer a 242gt. So, in Jan 2014 he managed to buy one. ( long story could be written here! ) The 242gt is now almost ‘finished’ enough for him to swap over the 940. It’s a brilliant car to drive, and I love the overdrive gearbox. It would be hard to find any 1980 4 cylinder car that could fill the shoes of a 242gt today. Porsche 924 also with k-jet perhaps?
My current daily drive, and also my last non-volvo, is about to run out of reg. So I decided I would get the closest cheap car I could to a 242gt. I bought a manual 1985 240. Except for some minor things, such as extra doors, it’s very similar to a 1980 242gt.
That’s a total of 9 family Volvos over the years, 6 still current. Plenty of stories, plenty of learning and insight, and guaranteed parking at any bowls club in Oz.
Rob
Another Queenslander.
Welcome.
Keen to see pictures.
Nosi
4 of the fleet
Nosi
the 242gt on a recent test run
Nosi
the 240 being trailered home. I have dome nothing to it since then, as I have been busy with my sons gt.
egads (she/her)
Manual 85 240! Very nice and would drive really punchily, I understand the 242gt comparison. Nice stuff and welcome again!
A_Volvo_Driver
Welcome mate. I look forward to reading more of your stories.
Nosi
Our first Volvo, the red 244gl.
( let me know if my stories are too long, or detailed ? I don’t want to use up all the kilojigs in the interwigit )
Although it was only 20 years ago, the way we bought cars was very different in the 90’s and earlier. Mobile phones existed, but were rare and generally only used by business people, because they were expensive, big, the batteries did not last long, coverage was poor and ALL they did was make and receive phone calls. ( texting didn’t appear in Qld until late 90’s I think ) Also personal computers were not common and the internet less so. ( Bigpond launched in 1996, and that was dial up ) So, how did we buy second hand cars? Firstly there were always the second hand dealers. In my case these were up and down the ‘magic mile’ at Moorooka. Of course you always expected to pay top dollar if you bought that way, and for some reason, every time I drove down the magic mile, my current car would play up, as if to warn me of impending doom. The best source of cars was when someone would plonk their car on the footpath, with a for sale sign. These were good because they were local and you could get a look at them prior to haggling with the owner. ( the best buy I got this way was a 1965 kombi which was seized, and for which I paid $100. This would be a $15000 proposition today ). The most common way we bought cars was the newspaper classifieds. Best was the trading post, which was Wednesday fortnightly, then the courier mail on a Saturday. If you could, you would get a copy right from the printers the night before, because by 8am the morning of issue, all the good buys would be sold. There were no digital cameras, so classifieds were print only. One near miss I had was a ford xp coupe. The seller had no phone so he just put his address in the advert, along with the price, $500. I drove straight there and arrived at about 7.30 am, only to be told it was already sold. It was in top condition.
Now, to the Volvo. In approx 1994 I was back in the realestate industry and wanted a cheap clean looking sedan. All the other sales dudes had modern jap cars or old mercs. I didn’t have a lot of dough, so I opted for a Volvo, based on the fact that a friend had a 240gle , which seemed good. Saturday morning I got to the newsagent at opening time, bought the first paper off the bundle, and quickly got home and started circling ads. One ad that I noted, but did NOT circle, was a Red 244. Red, I thought, was a funny colour for a Volvo. Anyway, I rang all the advertisers, went and looked at a few, but found nothing that suited me. Sunday morning I got the Sunday mail, and checked if there were any new ads. Nope, but the red one was still advertised. Red ? Sunday I drove around looking at car yards, local, mt Gravatt even over to the northside. Nothing. So in the arvo, I rang the red 244 owner. He said It was good nick, lowish miles reasonably priced, registered and ready to go. I couldn’t believe it but when I saw that car, red looks great on a 244 ! Also as a bonus the ciggy lighter worked so I could charge my motorola. All the drug addled real estate dudes were impressed with my classy red euro sedan.
During the time I owned it, there was little maintenance required. I replaced the in-tank pump, but otherwise just consumables were needed. The aircond worked, but every time it switched on, it acted like a large anchor. So I eventually disabled it by removing the compressor. The death knell for my ownership of this car was that it did not have power steer. Although it didn’t bother me, my wife, newly a mother, was not impressed by the extra effort required to pivot the Pirellis. Also I had changed jobs, due to the fact that with a newborn son around, I could not continue the drug habits necessary for successful real estate sales. My new job required a van, so that spelled the end of our first red Volvo. I remember that on the last day I drove it, I was entering a steady flow of fast moving traffic, so I vigorously stomped on the loud pedal. I could not believe it, the cheap, clean sedan dropped back to first and took off like a scolded cat ! It had never done that before, but then I had never asked it to. Several things stuck in my mind after owning the 244 -It was quiet, comfortable, respectable, reliable, cheap to buy and own, but had a bit of poke if you begged it.
Clearly it would not be our last ovlov.
Wino
Love the GT. Identical to my old one, cept mine had lost its stripes.
Nosi
hope you all don't mind me blatantly 'using' the forum for my own purposes, but, I need to refer to a quote that I made, and it needs to be 'published' somewhere for me to refer to. this is for a uni assignment. therefore, my next post will make no sense. thanks for your understanding.
Nosi
in February 2012, I said- ‘Sometimes when we seek the answer to a problem, the solution is not palatable’
egads (she/her)
Lol, good work.
Nosi
Nosi
Nosi
Our second Volvo was a 740gl, white with blue interior, which we bought in around 1997. At the time we had a van, which we gave to the father in law, and having just built a new home, and now having an office job, we wanted a nice family sedan. We saw the 740 at Centenary Volvo and it seemed to be what we wanted. It was around $20000 from memory. Hard to think that I would pay that for a 740, but at the time that was the go. The most impressive thing about it was that it had anti lock brakes. I still remember the test drive and the sales dude getting me to stomp on the brakes, Wow! As it was near new, it was brilliantly comfortable, and a really classy car. We would play a Vivaldi cassette all the time and pretend we were classy too.
Those were the days when interest rates had just come down from 17%, and money was flowing freely in the economy. We must have been wearing very rose coloured glasses, now that I think back.
Anyway, one day the transmission decided that it would no longer provide the option of forward motion. It was being a little bit selfish, as it decided to do so on a narrow 2 way road with no runoff and high gutters. Therefore the car was blocking one lane. In the time it took for the towie to arrive, a ute decided that he would take the driver’s side wing mirror as a trophy. So we were out of pocket the tow, a mirror and a gearbox, on what we thought was supposed to be a reliable car.
To add to the pain, I borrowed a crappy Daihatsu charade whilst the 740 was being repaired. Driving it was bad enough, but one morning on the way to work, a Queensland officer of the law pulled me over. Thinking that it was a random breath test, I was unconcerned. However he proceeded to charge me with doing 75 in a 60 zone. I pleaded that this was impossible, but what chance did I have? Thinking back though, the run-ins I have had with Newman’s Gestapo in recent years makes me think that the police in the 90’s were angels. I don’t want to be political, but I firmly believe that police in Queensland now are simply obnoxious tax collectors. Anyway, for the next few days that I had the charade, I drive it as fast as I could through that section of road, between two roundabouts, where I was booked. I could never get it to go as fast as 60, let alone exceed it ! Anyway, when we got the Volvo back, we lost a lot of the love we had for it, and traded it on a brand new Nissan pulsar sss 2.0 manual. However another Volvo would soon be in our lives.....
jamesinc
@Nosi I edited your posts with spaces between paragraphs to make them a bit easier to read.
Ex850R
Am not getting an edit version here on mobile?
jamesinc
*shrug* Hit refresh?
OldnDecrepit
Unedited here too on my main rig.
Nosi
sorry, that's from doing a subject where they don't want you to put in 'enters'.
I will take more care next time.
