I happily drove the car around town for a week before I started noticing some weirdness in the transmission. I made an offer on the spot, and bought the car. The cars you see here - the Volvo 245, the Mazda Miata, and the Ford Fiesta ST - would eventually be the cars left standing in my fleet today. The seller said that he never drove the car on the freeway and so never bothered trying to figure out why the overdrive wasn’t working. I could flick the little switch on the shift knob back and forth, but the light on the dash wouldn’t illuminate. I took the car on a test drive and tried turning on the overdrive, and that wasn’t working either. Naturally, the air conditioning wasn’t working, or it at least wasn’t blowing cold air. The dealership also added air conditioning. The car came with its original window sticker, which explained why the interior had plaid yellow cloth seat inserts - the dealership added those and I’m sure it padded the margin on the car quite nicely. The original owner took delivery of the car there, and the seller was the second owner, having bought the car via an eBay auction. It was also rust free, having originally come from Arizona. One look at this car and it was clear that it was a child of the 70s (despite its 1980 model year).Īlso, the seller of this car was in my neighborhood.Īlmost the day that the ad went up, I contacted the seller and swung by his house to take a look at the car. The later and far more common 240s (after Volvo abandoned the 242, 244, and 245 naming convention) had square headlamps and blacked out trims, making them look very 80s. The wagon looked super old school, with its four round headlights on the front, polished metal window trims, and a polished metal roof rack.
#STATION WAGON 1980 MANUAL#
And of course, it had a manual transmission: a 4-speed with an electric overdrive. Second thing that caught my eye was that it was a wagon. Not only was the exterior yellow, but so was the interior, with caramel brown vinyl seats that had plaid yellow cloth seat inserts. The first thing that caught me eye was that it was yellow. I have a regular local Craigslist search that plucks out all manual transmission equipped cars for sale by owners (protip: create a search for “manual|stick”), and the car came up in one of my daily Craigslist browsing sessions. I wasn’t looking for a Volvo, specifically. Perhaps we can start off with the fact that it is yellow. Just what do I find so special - so appealing - about this car? In other words, I can’t explain to most normal folks why I have this car. It is a normal car, an appliance, driven by suburban moms and dads to schlep their kids around town, with no pretensions towards anything more exiting than the rush of finding a coupon for the brand of cereal you like in the Sunday newspaper.
#STATION WAGON 1980 PLUS#
It’s not charmingly weird like the Saab 96, not sports car cool like the Morgan Plus 4, or a style icon like the Mustang (or whatever the opposite of a style icon is with my Subaru XT Turbos). Of all the vintage cars I’ve owned, it’s by far the most pedestrian of the lot.
It is hard to explain why I like this car so much.
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