Curbside Outtake: Volvos, Then And Now
– Posted on July 23, 2021
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Wow. I always looked at the 244/264 as being a fairly big car.
The picture would fit good in this topic:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=140&t=1218324
I’ll bet my 240’s trunk would swallow whatever fits in that other thing.
I had one, a big-bumpered 1980 2-door. Yes, I could squeeze a lot of stuff in that trunk.
My beautiful 164E had an enormous trunk…to fit all the spare parts it constantly needed.
I can never look at a 240 (if the front vehicle is not such; it’s close) without thinking of the young woman I dated my senior year of college. Notwithstanding my university cred, I was still very much an Italian kid from a gritty Northeast industrial city with blue collar roots, who had recently broken up with a young woman from my hometown who very much matched my background. Notwithstanding all that, the stars aligned to bring me together with a WASP (I mean that in the nicest possible way) young woman who had also recently suffered a breakup. I felt like Billy Joel singing Uptown Girl when I was with her; she seemed so far out of my league. What completed the picture was the fact that she drove her family’s old 240, which to me was the vehicle of tony Greenwich downstate.
In any event, we lasted about a year before we wnet our separate ways, for reasons having nothing to do with our disparate backgrounds. To this day I think of her as the one that got away, and can’t help but wonder if we had stayed together, we be blissfully driving the modern vehicle in the photo.
Cars really are a major marker of the times of our lives, and the conveyances which literally carry us to each new phase, which is why they will always be more than mere transportation.
Well, to be fair, one needs to compare that V60 with the 245 (wagon); and to take into account that it’s hard to get accurate data online about cargo capacities of cars that are so far apart in age. Best would be to go at both with a tape measure.
Still, point very well taken. I am willing to bet (without having a V60 here to take the tape measure to) that the V60 has little more space inside than my 1976 245. But my 245 would look equally dwarfed, as that 244 does, to that V60.
I fully acknowledge the value of airbags and other safety items in modern cars. But I do wonder if it would be possible to utilize these things without the bloat that seems to afflict nearly all modern cars. Looking at pictures such as that posted here definitely begs that question.
I believe that’s a V90XC, not a V60. It’s seven inches longer than a 1980 244 so some of that is the camera lens/angle making it look so much larger comparatively. The bumpers of the 244 are part of the length though and less visible in the shadows whereas they are far more integrated into the newer car.
A V60 measures in at 2″ shorter than the older 244 so not really bloated.
I understand the market demand aspects, but it sure is a darn shame the US will no longer get the regular V90, just the plastic-lipped, lifted XC version like this one.
Evolvo.
Ok that was funny.