After the Alfa Romeo, I longed for something that felt reliable and stable, something familiar. So I started looking for a Volvo 740 like my dad once owned. I ended up buying a white 1988 744 GLE – he once had a dark blue 1984 744 GLE. But unlike his, mine had an automatic transmission (the four-speed), power windows and power sunroof. It also had the Draco wheels from the Turbo version.
Needless to say this was somewhat of a change from the Alfa Romeo, but I enjoyed the smooth ride. Later as an Alabama Crimson Tide fan since 2009 (Roll Tide!), I would definitely have appreciated the fact that the color combo was what “Bear” Bryant would have chosen: white exterior, crimson interior. At the time though, I thought the extent of red velvet was a bit excessive. Here’s a shot of the interior. You can appreciate the ambiance, I’m sure:
The car ran well and I like an automatic transmission. To me it’s all about context. An auto box makes perfect sense in a naturally aspirated 740 and zero sense in any Alfa Romeo. To me this styling looks great, and I still think a 744 in bright red with the 16” Hydra wheels and the black Turbo grille looks absolutely amazing.
(Draco wheels – not Hydra wheels)
Being a kid of the eighties, I love boxy styling. I realize this styling is more than a little influenced by the main market for Volvo at the time, the US, but I think Volvo pulls this look off better than any of the Big Three did (hell yeah, I’m biased).
As was my style at the time, I was all about modifications and not at all about maintenance. So, I got bitten by the car audio bug at the time. I bought two Audiobahn amplifiers and a set of two-way speakers for the rear. I never got further than that before a lacking maintenance issue bit me in the ass: A light in the instrument cluster had gone out so one night while cruising at 90 mph the car suddenly started losing power and making weird noises.
A 744 GL
I pulled over and noticed that the temperature gauge had gone all the way into the red. The engine was steaming and I found out that a radiator hose had sprung leak. I had the car towed and learned that the engine was shut. Add to that the fact that other issues, mainly with rust, had set in and I got rid of it for 3.000 DKK. Yet another car to die at my hands. Yet again very much due to buying a high mileage car and not maintaining it. Apart from my low mileage Fiat all my other cars at this point had at least 250,000 km (155,000 miles on them).
The Volvo died around 2006. It would be another six years before I got another car. While the lessons had cost dearly, I had at least (finally) learned something: Maintenance pays off and reliability is something you can directly impact.
(None of the cars here are mine)
So often online I see photos of cars with the license number blanked out. For the life of me I do not understand this. What could be more public than the license plate(s) on a car?
In a lot of places your license number is read by automatic devices belonging to various governmental authorities and saved for a time by most of them, and also photographed by road cameras for random online consumption. And every driver you come in contact with sees it, although few would notice it unless they like the looks of the car, they are license plate collectors, or they want to find out who nearly ran them off the road.
So you photograph the car to sell it on Craigslist, or to feature it here. Well, now about thirty to three hundred people will see that license plate in addition to the multitude who have already seen it. Oh no, can’t have that, gotta blank it out!
Yeah, I agree. Especially like here in Denmark where you can run the license plate online to check if the car has passed its inspections. It seems shady not to disclose it when selling the car.
That first photo is British. (RAC sticker on windscreen, amongst other things)
In the UK, “cloning” is a problem, whereby people will have plates made up with the same reg number as your car and put them on the same model and colour of car.
I blank the plates on the cars I shoot and feature on CC. This is because I tend to shoot cars that are in some way collectible. Though you cannot (presently) access the registered domicile of any car here in Victoria, Australia via their plates, it’s a sign of respect to the owner. Unfortunately we live in a world where cars or trim parts can be stolen, so I err on the side of caution. Interestingly, if I come across a car and owner I want to shoot, any hesitation on their part is assuaged by my assurances about blanking the plate.
Interesting that you are doing a write-up about this car. A few issues ago, a British magazine that I’ve started buying called MODERN CLASSICS compared this car to a contemporary Ford Granada with a 2 liter engine and automatic transmission. I was sure that being British they would chose the Ford as the car they wouldn’t mind owning again. NOPE, they picked the Volvo.
BTW, their Volvo was “double” gold.
Seems like it would pull doubke the ladies.
The Granada always seemed extremely conservative, even compared to this. It’s funny but now that you mention it, it hits me that I haven’t seen a Granada/Scorpio over here in years. They were rather common when new, but they must all have rusted away. That’s not the case with the Volvo – they have not surprisingly held up well in the Scandinavian climate.
The criticism of the Granada centered on it’s styling….they pretty much said it was a conservative re-hash of the Sierra, and as a result wasn’t quite as roomy as it should have been.
The other criticism was of the engine and transmission….IIRC. The Granada had a coarser “feeling” 4 cylinder.
You never see a Granada here in the states, though I did see 2 or 3 in the mid 90s when I lived in Memphis. The Volvo? I still see them occasionally on Craigslist but almost never on the road. In some way they have been supplanted by Subarus, at least to my way of thinking.
This is a car I love to hate. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I think the proportions are stunning. I think the combination of size and practicality, combined with the opportunity for a sporty 4 cylinder turbo, is very appealing. But … BUT … some of the detail styling and trim decisions Volvo made, like that weird diagonal piece at the base of the C pillar, and the other fussy bits around the bumpers and headlights and body side moldings!!! What were they thinking???
You comment about some of Volvo’s weird styling decisions reminded me of something I read once. In their very practical, Swedish way, Volvo decided they wanted to be able to use the same doors on both the sedan and station wagon versions of their cars. Doing so necessitated making some unusual styling choices. On most sedans the roof line slopes down toward the back, while on most wagons the roof is a straight line until well behind the rear doors. On the 240, they went with a more traditional sloping roofline on the sedan. This meant that on the wagon, the top of the back doors slope downwards, even though the roofline doesn’t. On the 740 they went the other way and designed the doors around the wagon’s roof. This necessitated that the sedan have a kind of odd, squared off look at the back to accommodate the wagon’s doors.
Quite likely you read it here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-rear-door-dilemma/
Ha, so I did.
I’m not sure that was really a styling decision. Probably a Manufacturing or Finance decision over the protests of the stylists. But those C pillar trim bits (at the bottom on the 700’s, at the top on the latter 240’s … those have to be purely for style; I don’t think they’re hiding a seam.
It is true for cars with long wheelbase from Holden and Ford Australia. They would peruse the same rear doors for both standard and long wheelbase. You can see the bigger gap between wheel opening and door in the rear on the long wheelbase.
Europeans do it properly with rear doors in two lengths for both wheelbases.
Really nice ride Mads.
I have always liked squared Volvo’s design. In my eyes nowdays they look even more beautiful, so distinctive.
I had a 744 GLE 16 valve for a short time. It was black with a tan interior and had the Rigel wheels. It had 190,000 on it and still looked almost new. (Amazing since it was a Wisconsin car it’s whole life.) The only issues it gave me were a relay for overdrive (cheap) and an alternator ($200). It was a great little machine.
I gave it to my ex when her car died. Sadly, it didn’t make it a full year after that. The last time I saw it was at a Police lot looking like it had been in a demolition derby.
I have always like the 700 Series Volvos. I hope to own one someday. There is a certain understated sophistication in the design…appealing to Americans like myself..who eschew the flashiness of Mercedes and BMW brands.
My dream 700 would have the wheels on the red one shown above. It would also receive a GM V8 transplant…as shown to be very practical here: http://www.jagsthatrun.com/Pages/Volvo_700_V-8.html
I learned those lessons on maintenance from my father. Or from his negative example, more precisely. Dad rode them hard and got rid of them, and I felt sorry for the poor sap who was the next owner of one of his cars. He never garaged them (until later in life) so any scrape would begin rusting right away. Maintenance was seen as an unnecessary expense if you get rid of the car in two years. When I asked him when he had last changed oil in the 76 Monarch, he said that he never did. 37,000 miles. Yikes!
I have gone the other way, sort of out of respect for the machine. People usually like my old cars.
Oh, and I loved the interior picture. Those Volvos are bigger inside than they look. 🙂
Your father and mine must have attended the same school of automotive ownership.
My father never kept a car for more than 3 years except the ’69 Chevy truck he used for plowing the driveway and hauling miscellany. He was actually an early proponent of leasing back in the 70’s when he leased a Plymouth Satellite and then a Cordoba for 2 years each for business use. I’m fairly certain neither of them would have ever seen a service bay had the transmission not started slipping on the Cordoba before it was turned in.
In his later years he went back to leasing when it became more commonplace, and of course had the cars serviced properly so as not to be penalized at turn-in. That still didn’t stop him from abusing the hell out of them. A 2003 Cadillac CTS comes to mind. Being an insurance agent, he was loathe to file a claim on any of his own policies, to save face and to save premium. As his driving skills deteriorated he managed to damage just about every body panel on that leased Cadillac, paying for all the repairs out of pocket to avoid penalty. This was cause for an endless stream of vitriol because he absolutely hated that car anyway. Some poor soul likely ended up with a doozie of a “Certified Pre Owned” CTS.
As a kid I thought the 700-series Volvos were boring, but I went on to own one. It’s a 780 coupe, though, so it’s a bit different. But there are many similarities with the post-refresh 740 and 760 models, especially inside. Good, solid cars, and think the reason that they don’t have the same survival rate as their 240-series brethren has to do with generally higher option levels (more to fail) and the somewhat troublesome nature of the PRV V6 in the early 760’s (though that was sorted in ’87 and it was a solid engine after that).
Wouldn’t mind a 740 turbo wagon either.
CC effect going on here, but in reverse! I haven’t thought about these cars much for a long time but just yesterday something got me interested in them again. I spent a while (to much time) looking on Craigslist and Autotrader for 700 series turbo wagons. Then I attempted to convenience my wife that we could probably sell her 4Runner and get a nice turbo brick. She does like less common cars and likes to mod whatever she has (one reason she’s my wife) so I thought it might be fairly easy to sell her on the idea. I was wrong. Here’s a picture of what I tried to sell her on.
Nice Mads. A wagon was on my shopping list when I ended up with my W116 M-B. I like the boxy styling, but nothing will replace the mother’s milk feeling of my original 145.
My parents owned Volvos at the time my dad died six years ago. Mom’s license had been revoked in Boston as she suffered from senile dementia…it had sat for four years, I guess. My brother was executor of the estate, and did most of the work cleaning out their house (I live in Florida, hard to help from here). With first choice, he took Mom’s 744 with a 6cyl; I got Dad’s older 240 with the bulletproof B230F and 4spd auto.
I flew up to Massachusetts and drove the 240 back home to Fort Myers, 1400 miles, no problems. My brother had his 744 towed from Deerfield back to Acushnet, almost on the Cape, and never got it running right. He sold it for scrap to some school kid a year later and $1500 lighter. 🙂
My wife LOVES her 1990 Volvo 240. 😀
Lgbpop,
Are you going to be selling that 1990 240 anytime soon? I’m always on the lookout for older RWD Volvos.
The CC geography effect?
I don’t recognize the red car, but I drive past that location almost every day. It is sitting in the driveway of the old Fisher Body plant on the west side of Lansing.
In 1988 my dad narrowed it down to a new 740 or a Toyota Cressida. He ended up buying the Cressida, which was in the last year of its “boxy” form. He never regretted getting the Cressida, but I always wondered which was the better choice. Depends on your perspective, I guess.
My sister had a white 1986 740 GLE that she LOVED – crank sunroof and all. It was her favorite car ever. She wasn’t the best with maintenance, however – and ended up blowing up the engine due to a lack of oil changes. I think it may have had about 140k miles on it when it finally quit. Sadly, her mechanic “took it off her hands” for $100, telling her it was junk. Well, he put another engine in it and sold it for close to $4000! Ironically the new owners lived near my Mom’s house where I grew up so I saw that Volvo driving around for many years later! (And my sister switched mechanics)
Even without a cazillion airbags on board these Volvos are still much safer cars than any small car made today. Probably safer or just as safe as some current day midsize cars. Volvo took immeasurable pride in safety. Something of which other auto manufactures never went the extra mile like Volvo did. Volvo was (still is?) a master in seat design. I sat in a late ’90s 960 once and was positively suduced by the seat comfort. Volvos also have a long standing reputation of lasting a very, very long time. They’re not as long lived as a Toyota, but near by. I’m happy that Volvo is no longer under ball and chain by the dipsh?!s at Ford. Ford would’ve completely killed off Volvo; the same way the jackasses at GM all but killed off SAAB. Thank you to the Chinese investors who spared the great Volvo brand, and Volvo is now making a strong comeback!