It seemed like a good idea at the time. And it wasn’t premeditated – no, this happened quite without planning, almost by accident. Quite innocently. I had gone to a local shopping center back in June of 2014 in search of office supplies of some sort, maybe printer cartridges. As I got out of my car to walk toward the entrance, a boxy, black shape caught my eye. A Volvo, in fact a 780 coupe. I’d always liked those, so I walked over thinking I’d snap a couple of photos of it. And when I got there, there was a For Sale sign on the car. That’s when the trouble started.
Perhaps trouble is too strong a word, or at least I’m getting ahead of myself. 1988 Volvo Bertone, said the sign. $2000 OBO. It looked pretty sharp–no visible rust, straight body, a peek through the windows revealed a nice interior other than some cracking in the leather of the driver’s seat. Very interesting, and very tempting. I hadn’t been looking to add a car to my fleet, but this was perhaps my favorite Volvo model, at least top 5. The price was reasonable. Hmmm. At the very least, I needed more info, and I started making a case for how I might sell the idea to my wife.
I did my homework first, of course. Located a craigslist ad for the car, with a lot of information about exactly what it was, and portrayed the condition to be very good. It was the V6 rather than the more desirable turbo four, but for a relatively rare car, beggars can’t be choosers. So I emailed the seller with some questions, and he maintained that it had no bad habits and many virtues, and had just passed its annual safety inspection the previous month. Just shy of 160K miles, which didn’t sound too bad in Volvo years. I brought the idea up to my wife, and rather surprisingly, it didn’t take much persuading. It wasn’t too expensive and she realized I’d like a change of pace from the daily driver Crown Vic. So I made an appointment to go take a look at the car.
Keep in mind that, at this time, I lived in an apartment with no off-street parking. Plus, I had my old Malibu back at my parents’ house, which needed restoration. And yet here I was thinking of buying another car, one that probably would need some work despite its apparent good condition, and I’d have to find street parking for it, plus I had nowhere to work on it. I guess I’m not so smart sometimes. Nonetheless, as I was driving toward our meeting place, I glanced into my rearview mirror and noticed that, from a side street, a silver Citroen DS had pulled out and was now following me. To call that a rare sight is an understatement–I’d only ever seen a few of them “in the metal” and this was the only quad-lamp Series III I’d ever spotted. I slowed down, hoping it would pass and allow for a good photo, but it only followed me for a few blocks and then disappeared onto another side street. I considered this chance encounter with a rare, desirable classic to be kind of a good omen about the car I was going to look at. I’ve never seen that Citroen again since, though it was wearing Virginia plates.
I met the seller at Starbucks and examined the car. Everything looked good on closer inspection–paint was in good shape, though some sun fading/clearcoat hazing was apparent, mostly on the wheel arch flares on one side of the car. A couple small spots of rust had been repaired, but nothing major. We went for a drive and, while no rocketship with the 150 horsepower B280F hauling around 3,500 lbs of Volvo, it moved down the road well enough, and handling was well-controlled with pleasantly weighted steering. The electric windows worked, as did the A/C, the sunroof, the fog lamps, and most everything else other than the power antenna. That was not a big issue as it didn’t have a radio in any case. These cars came with fancy (for the late 80’s) sound systems from the factory, but a previous owner had decided to upgrade, and had kept his equipment when selling it to the fellow who currently owned it. What it did come with was a tall stack of service records, dating from around the turn of the millenium to current.
I liked what I saw, and liked what I drove, and offered him $1800. He accepted, we shook hands, and he drove the car over the next day to transfer the title. After that was done, he asked me for a lift to a block of garages in my neighborhood, where he said he kept his “fun car”. Said “fun car” turned out to be a 1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider. Lucky dude. His rationale for selling the Volvo, so he told me, was an impending move to Montana. The 780 was being replaced by a truck, with which to tow a trailer, hauling the Alfa behind. He wasn’t letting go of that one, and I wouldn’t either!
Back to the 780, which was now in my possession. To the uninitiated, it looks…sort of like a 760 coupe. Until you start looking at it with a critical eye, and realize that unlike the 262C, it’s not just a 760 with two less doors and a chopped top. Instead, when commissioned to create a follow-up to that somewhat controversial 262, Bertone took a different tack and changed just about everything. While keeping the general look of the 700 series, every panel on the 780 is unique to that car. The hood and trunk lines are lower, the roof is lower, the grille and lamps are slimmer–it’s an entirely different design in the same language. And to my eye, the result looked fantastic. The interior was also given the Bertone once-over. The dash format is shared with the 760, but the 780 dresses things up with genuine beech wood accents on the dash as well as in the rear-seat side trim panels, and the supportive bucket seats are unique. Several interior color choices were available, with solid black and solid tan joined by a couple of very 80’s choices in two-tone leather, gray/black and blue/black. Not only was the design work by Bertone, but they actually handled the production as well, making this car a product of Turin, Italy rather than Gothenburg, Sweden.
Not my actual interior, but identical. Didn’t get a good photo of mine before I started taking things apart…
Underneath the skin it was mostly 760, including the self-leveling independent rear suspension starting in ’88. The debut engine was the B280F in Volvo parlance, a 2.8 liter version of the somewhat infamous “PRV” V6. However, that engine had been thoroughly redesigned in 1985, with a new even-fire design that eliminated many of the notorious weaknesses of the first-gen PRV engines (like too-narrow oiling passages). It was joined in 1989 by the turbo version of the 2.3 liter “redblock” I4, the engine which has achieved near-immortality in so many 240 and 740 sedans and wagons. The turbo is the more desirable engine (and more powerful) but the six does have its charms, including less noise and more smoothness. Either way, it’s a solid and reassuring drive, befitting the range-topping nature of the 780 coupe. It all didn’t come cheap, either–this was a $38,000 car back in 1988 ($76,000 adjusted).
For the first while life with the 780 was good. For years I’d wanted a car with a sunroof, and now I had one, so lots of open-sunroof motoring was the order of the day. Even my wife enjoyed weekend drives in the coupe. Plus I never grew tired of looking at it, and the premium leather-and-wood interior was much nicer than that of the Crown Vic (which was still serving on my daily work commute). Basically, I was happy to be back in a car that I felt good about driving. I noticed a few issues–when stopped at a light with the windows open and the engine fully warmed up, a slight oil smell could be detected. Given that there was no smoke, I presumed there was a slight leak that was dripping on the exhaust manifold or some other hot component. I also noticed a vibration when pulling away from a stop, which I diagnosed (with a little assistance from an online Volvo forum) as a driveshaft bushing which needed replacement. That got put on the back burner as it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.
So my attention turned to the radio. The plastic box it was supposed to mount into was cracked, but I found a replacement online. Lucky stroke, that, as I had discovered many parts for these cars are NLA, and often one’s only source is to wait for someone parting out a wrecked example. With a total production of 8518, about ~5700 of which were sold in the US, this doesn’t happen all that often. However, that wasn’t the only issue. The audiophile previous owner had removed or reconfigured pretty much *all* of the wiring that dealt with the radio and speakers, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was left, especially given that the original harness had been cut rather than an adapter run. It was all starting to look just a little beyond my skill level. Okay, back-burner that too.
October or November ended sunroof season in more ways than one. The car has a glass moonroof with a sliding inside shade. I could tell the headliner of the car had been redone at some point, and while the headliner itself seemed to be a decent quality job, they also recovered the sliding shade in some sort of vinyl material. That started to sag, causing the sliding shade to get irrevocably stuck in its sliding track. In the process of un-sticking the shade, the material covering it came mostly unglued, so I pulled it down. Not only was I left with a black shade in a tan roof, but the whole surface was still tacky from the glue, rendering it mostly unable to slide. And to re-cover the slide would require removing it, which entailed taking down the headliner, which according to the factory “greenbook” repair manual involved removing the rear windscreen. As it was getting cold anyhow, I figured I’d leave that for warmer months (notice a pattern forming?).
I didn’t end up driving the Volvo much in January or February due to bad weather and lingering road salt. March brought a new and intermittent problem, though–the car would sometimes flat-out refuse to start. The dash lights would come on, as would interior accessories, but the starter wouldn’t fire. Checked the battery and was told it was fine. Started looking into the issue more, and identified a few possible culprits–the starter switch, the park-neutral safety switch, or wiring gremins between the dash and the starter. Ignoring the best-practice advice of “don’t throw parts at a problem” I decided to try the starter switch first. Bought a new one, but between its arrival and my attempts at installation, a bigger issue came up, unrelated to the car. We had come to the renewal deadline for our lease and decided that it was time to buy a house. We found ourselves in late March with the requirement to find a home, arrange the purchase, and move, all before July 1. Somehow, we did it, moving into the new place on June 30.
The Volvo had been essentially forgotten during all this, and when I went to start it up to move it to our new house, no amount of coaxing would get it to start. So I had a new house in the Northside area of Richmond, and a car stuck in my old Museum District neighborhood. It was parked on the street, though, which gave me an advantage–folks were used to seeing it there and no one would look too askance if it stuck around a while longer. So there it stayed, and I stopped by on the way home from work most days to work on it. Replaced the starter switch to no avail, disassembling much of the lower dash in the process. Tried to replace the park-netural switch but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get to it. I ended up attaching a test lead to the hot terminal of the starter and applying the other end of that to the negative battery terminal, at which point the Volvo finally roared back to life and I made the journey from old home to new in late July.
In the meantime both the plates and the safety inspection had expired. I decided to make the switch to antique/collector plates, but never got around to taking the paperwork to the DMV, as all of my weekend hours were now occupied with home improvement projects. So passed the summer and fall both, with “house stuff” taking precedence over “car stuff”. Which brings us to the present day… Since bringing the Volvo here to our new house last July, it’s been driven all of twice, both times around the neighborhood. I’ve made no progress on the starting issue, other than the observation that a brand-new battery makes it happen less frequently. I still haven’t renewed the registration. And, within the last couple months, a water leak has developed that is causing the rear footwell carpeting on the driver’s side to become soaked after rains. I have no idea where it’s leaking from, so I’ve had to go in with towels after each rain and try to soak up as much water as I can. I’m not getting it all though, so I’m afraid of both floorpan rust and also mildew/mold developing. (So far, frequent temperatures below freezing have kept that at bay). And to top it all off, perhaps to add insult to injury, one of the tires has gone flat in the past couple weeks.
It’s a shame, really. It’s still a beautiful car, though it could badly use a wash. The interior is still nice, even partially disassembled. Which is why fixing that water leak is now my paramount worry as the last thing I want is a permanent mildew smell. But I’ve learned the lesson that letting a few little things go can quickly turn into bigger problems, and the dilemma of trying to maintain an older car that *isn’t* your main transportation–when things break, they don’t have to be fixed immediately, as you’re not relying on the car to get you to work, to shop, or on trips. But it’s a slippery slope, one that ends with a non-functional car sitting on your driveway, making you feel guilty every time you look at it.
This is not to say I’ve given up. The problems are minor, all things considered, but if I were to sell it now, I might get half of my investment back. Plus I’m stubborn, and I want to prove to myself that I’m not in fact in over my head. I’d like to think that it was a lot of bad timing, what with the house hunt, leading to higher-priority matters throughout the summer/fall, and then quite a long stretch of cold weather. As spring approaches, I should have more free time to get back to work and fix what’s wrong. Maybe once I get the cabin reliably dry again, and the starting issue solved, I can even get a radio wired up. And I’ve got to get that sunroof shade operational again. Because it’s a fine machine to look at, but an even better one to actually drive. So I’m determined to prove that there will be more driving of the Volvo in my future. After all, how many Italian Swedes do you know?
Thanks for following me on this journey through the Cars of my Lifetime!
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1990 Volvo 780 – Rectilinear Luxury by Bertone
Curbside Classic: 1990 Volvo 780 Turbo Coupe – An Exotic Automobile for a Practical Consumer
Curbside Classic: 1980 Volvo Bertone Coupe – Lost in Translation
Nice one. Keep her on the road!
Go to a specialist company. They use high pitch sound, and a microphone, to locate the leak(s).
Nice car. One of my favorite Volvos. If it had stuck around, I would have been curious how Bertone would have handled the excellent restyle the 960 got in 1995. The 181-197hp 2.9 inline six would have been a great addition.
I hope you are able to get your issues sorted. Money issues allowing, it may be time to find a good Volvo specialist.
A great article on a car I’ve never paid much attention to. I guess that’s a prejudice on my part: Diagonal Slash on Grille = Boring. Not necessarily so! Your tales of working on your car at curbside brought back some memories for me. I have never really had a proper garage or workspace for car repair. For oil changes, I used to park the car with the passenger side tires up on the curb, eliminating the need for a jack (and admittedly trapping some old oil on the driver’s side of the oil pan).
Great read Chris! The 780 is such a beautiful car, and yours looks especially sharp in black. I can totally understand your need to put the repairs needed for it on the back burner.
A very educational piece on a car that I never really appreciated.
You have described my own life with old cars. Marriage and house divert enough time, but when you add kids to the mix, that’s that. Some people manage to find time to golf 2 days a week, and some find time to restore and maintain multiple cool old cars. I am not one of those people. I have decided that something simple is the only kind of old car that will work for me.
A garage will help. Then you can maybe find an hour or two a week to tackle one of these projects. Or, there is always that great all-purpose tool: the checkbook.
The garage is one of those things that may or may not ever happen. The lots in this neighborhood are small, as it was laid out in the early 30’s and it’s within a few blocks of where the electric streetcar line ended. Not much room for garages; I could physically fit a one-car on the lot but if the current code involves setback rules from the lot line, forget it.
The checkbook may end up being the right tool for the job indeed.
Nice writeup. I had completely forgotten you had a 780. Beautiful machine! My much-missed 1991 940SE was black over tan, as is my mom’s ’95 Jag. A great color combo.
I hope you get the car buttoned up as time permits, it’s worth it, and you’ll likely never find another 780 unless you do a nationwide search. Hope it all works out!
Absolutely gorgeous car, thanks for sharing the story. Hope you luck changes with the repairs!
Great write-up and nice Volvo, Chris.
Too bad, about those lil quirks and electrical gremlins, you have to deal with… Must be the Italian Bertone side showing it’s true colors… The Mr. Hyde to the Volvo side’s Dr. Jekyll. Lol
It’s true, about putting minor problems in the background, though doing that, can turn them into bigger and more expensive problems, if left neglected for too long.
Also, what’s up with those 1978-81 Malibu projects, we both got going on, taking a back seat to other projects? 🙂
Out of all my cars, my 81 Malibu Classic, is the only one I haven’t registered, insured or titled, yet.
I’ve owned it since 2012, and have had other cars in my stable, after that one.
An electrical ground issue and a leaky brake line, keep it parked for now… Till one day, when I get motivated. 😉
I saw one of these last week in the parking garage at work, also in black, and it stopped me in my tracks. Volvo coupe, 2 door, Bertone badge on the pillar. Didn’t know what model it was, or that such a thing even existed. Parked amongst a bunch of newish BMWs and the like, the low, taut lines and clean styling put the other cars to shame.
I hope you get the issues worked out, the car deserves the care.
Nice looking car, but an absolute disaster. Sorry for your luck.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say disaster (there’s plenty of worse things that could happen to a car!)
It’s been an adventure. That sounds better. 🙂
This is a beautiful car. A Swede in an Armani suit. It’s new car price is eye popping. As a curbside classic it should be challenging but if you approach it like an everyday car it should be manageable too.
I would find the leak rather quickly with the garden hose method. I would look closely at the weather stripping at the door windows and I would make sure the drain holes at the bottom of the doors are open. That’s what I would do and I don’t even know Volvo from an owner’s perspective.
The electrical issues should be similarly straight forward. A decent wiring diagram and some patient fiddling with an ohm meter should reveal the bugs.
But at that stage it looks a bit daunting. I think it would be more fun if you could involve other Volvo aficionados for some of the jobs.
Anyway, wishing you the best of success!
I’ve seen one in the wild a few years ago.
Water leak could be caused by plugged drain tubes around sunroof opening, visible when sunroof is open. Try blowing compressed air into those holes and see if that eliminates water in the foot well.
fantastic cars, always wanted one myself. it sounds very frustrating but if you can get through these teething pains, you may end up with a true classic that is very reliable for many years.
before handing the car off to a volvo specialist, i would try this: buy a high quality silicone based lubricant (not regular wd40). check and then spray all the rubber seals on the car. even if it doesn’t fix this leak, it may prevent future leaks.
as to the sunroof screen, just slide it back into the headliner and forget it. enjoy the view!
the electrical gremlins sound nasty. my parents had a similar problem on their 940 which was solved at some expense by the dealer.
Beautiful car Chris, and I hope you persevere with it. My advice would be to find a Volvo specialist, even if you’re mechanically inclined. Just about every major metropolitan area has at least one if not more. These guys make their living keeping old RWD bricks roadworthy, and they know how to cut through the crap and get to the source of a problem quickly. Your intermittent start problem is a good example – it’s likely a wiring issue, and a mechanic with experience with these cars should be able to easily diagnose it’s source.
These happen to be charming cars not without virtues, but as they age little things conspire to keep them from peak condition. It’s best to enjoy them with all their various foibles.
I bought my brick, a ’94 940 Turbo, in September 2009. It was hardly in prime condition, but about what you could expect for all of $1600. I too had all these plans for the car, get the sunroof working, put new speakers in it, but life has consistently conspired to get in the way, and for the most part I simply enjoy it as is and try to stave off mechanical deterioration as best as possible. Currently I’m losing coolant from some obscure hose I’ve yet to diagnose, and the harness for the driver’s side headlight has a loose connection: once a week I turn on the lights, and driver’s side headlight is off. A quick rap on the lens or jiggling the harness resolves the problem temporarily – but it’s a 22 year old car, so I tend to focus more on the bigger issues and let the little things slide. It’s not a show car.
Nice Volvo
There was one in a burgundy color in the local pick it pull it junk yard last summer. That is the only one i have seen.
Anyway your issues are a Volvo thing. Most things on a 240/700 Series/900 Series are easy to fix yourself. The radio issue can be fixed using one of two ways.
Way one is to go to a local junk yard and find a 87-90 Volvo 740/760 and cut the radio connector from that one (measure out about 2-3 inches and cut) then match up the colors in the cut radio harness and butt connect them together. That should fix your issue.
The second way is to simply get an aftermarket radio and run the red wire to something that is only powered when the ignition is on. Run the Yellow wire to the cigarette lighter(or something that always has power) and then the black wire to ground. After that you can simply run 2 wires each to every door for the speakers
My Volvo 240 came with a Toyota radio wired in to it (using the toyota wire connector)
The starting issue is most likely a bad NSS (Neut. Safety switch) the switch is located on the shifter assembly, it can be bypassed by jumping the wires on the switch)
You will want to buy a spare Volvo fuel pump relay and keep it in the glove box. They tend to die without warning and leave you stranded. The relay is located behind the ashtray
You have 2 fuel pumps. The main pump which is exterior to the fuel tank and a helper pump which is inside the tank. The pumps are connected via rubber hose. If the helper pump dies, the main fuel pump will still be able to deliver gas to the engine but will work harder and wear out faster. It will also cause the exterior pump to get louder.
The good news is that you don’t need to drop the tank to change ether out.
Good luck with the car.
Here is a pic of one of my spare fuel pump relays
It came with several spare relays in the trunk storage well. I’ve always assumed one of them is a fuel pump relay, but it would probably pay to check!
It looks nice and Volvos are meant to be good cars, Famous last words for a friend who bought a 2001 2Litre Volvo wagon though it has proved to be a lemon the gravel road leading to its new home has been too much for the Swedish suspension to cope with and I hear its been replaced with a Toyota Fielder wagon which hopefully is a bit more robust.
Probably the car that marked the end of Bertone. They entered into a 50/50 agreement with Volvo and never saw the volumes they needed. Attractive car though, and I hope you can get rid of the niggles and enjoy it.
Lovely looking, and glad that you’re going to persevere with it! I had a similar sunroof issue in my old R33 Nissan Skyline, removing the header didn’t involve removing the rear glass, but may as well have as it was spectacularly difficult to get it out of the car once removed and that was a 4-door sedan, I can only imagine how much worse the task would be in a coupe. But such a stylish coupe…!
I snapped this pristine, navy blue Bertone 780, about a month ago, in a Dollar Tree parking lot.
There are quite a few around my area, and I live in MA. They seem to be in good shape, as far as rust goes.
There’s a guy who has a few 780’s(Forget the town)…Three as a matter of fact, for sale, along with a few 940s and 960s. Two of the 780s run good, the third either needs a new engine, or a little coaxing of its current one, to run.
It’s a fully galvanized body, so they don’t tend to rust much. Mine has a couple of small repaired spots around the windshield frame, but I haven’t seen any new corrosion in the two years I’ve had the car.
The dark blue is perhaps my favorite color for the Bertone coupes. You don’t see all that many colors–besides the dark blue and black, I’ve seen (in photos) white, burgundy, silver, and champagne/gold. Those may have been the only ones available. There’s a promotional/factory photo out there of one in a striking medium/light blue, but I’ve never seen another that color.
What an awesome car Chris! One my all-time favorites – such classy yet subtle lines. Take your time bringing her back to full colors…it’ll be worth it….
Interesting drive coming out of the city yesterday – saw a car with the license plate ROTFL, and then a few minutes later a pristine late ’80s SAAB 900 SPG. It seemed smaller than I remember amongst our steroid vehicles these days….
I feel your pain with Volvo electrical gremlins. My V90 is in the shop today getting some odds and ends dealt with. The C70 convertible needs and top and seems that the electronic throttle module is acting up. It’s always something, but these cars have such spirit…I briefly thought about a $99/mo lease on a Chevy Cruze but can’t bring myself to do it.
What’s your top estimated to cost? My guy estimated $2500….damn I wish I had 25% of the mechanic ability my dad and brother have…
The top itself is $750, the install numbers I have gotten are all over the map…from $750 to $1500. It’s one of those jobs I guess I COULD do, but it would never look quite right to me, and I’d obsess over every little flaw…if someone else does it, I don’t worry about it.
Great article and neat car ! Just saw one of these in traffic the other day–black with two tone black and tan interior.
On the leak, I would take a close look at the sunroof drains. There are rubber tubes in the pocket that it retracts into that can get plugged and cause leaks.
On the starter issue, it may be a bad starter. The test is to get a broom stick or something that a second person can whack the starter with while you have the key turned to ‘start’. It may well start when they hit it–which means to a new starter.
I left that test lead in place and can usually start it by jumping directly to the negative battery terminal with that when the key won’t do the trick, which makes me think that the starter isn’t the problem. If it’s not the park/neutral switch, then it may be a voltage issue in the wiring that runs between the starter switch and the starter itself.
I saw the only surviving 780 prototype at that museum where I shot all those Danish-built cars. It was white and had the VW diesel. I could not see any differences from the production models.
I really like these. Ideally I would swap in a torquey Chevy small block or maybe a 302. That way it would really be a 780 and such an engine would fit the car well.
I had a 740 GLE once and it needed a more torquey engine. Great car, though.
Are you trying to sell the car and what is the lowest price you will take