A passion for the wagon

The Volvos I remember from my youth were not like this. I was convinced they were supplied by the dealership with 100,000 miles on the clock because I never saw one with any fewer. Where other cars might have electric front windows, central locking and maybe even air conditioning, the Volvos had travel sweets, dog leads and cigarette burns in their upholstery. And smelled of duffle coats.

We never owned one because our family was so weird we actually liked cars, but seemingly all my mates’ parents drove them. And as going home from school involved getting on an aircraft, I’d usually end up at their houses for half terms and exeats, so I went in plenty.

There was one aspect of them that fascinated me: their naming strategy. I accept that what follows is pitiful, but give me a break: I was young. Volvos all had three digit names: 145, 244 and so on. But among everyone I knew, I alone knew what these numbers meant. And now so will you. The first digit was the series number, the 1-series being replaced by the 2-series (I’m not getting into the 3-series because they were largely dreadful and there was never an estate version, although I would just point out it had a transaxle gearbox like the contemporaneous Porsche 928), the second digit indicated the number of cylinders contained within its engine, the third the number of doors possessed by its body. So a 245 was a second series car with a four-pot motor and five doors that, in this case, made it an estate. Who else was naming cars after their cylinder count back then? Ferrari, that’s who – think 246 GT, 308 GTB, 412 GT, 512 TR and so on and on.

Of course, the most curious of all was the 262. So second series, six cylinders and just two doors! Its real name – 262C – rather gave the game away that this was actually a full-sized Volvo coupé and, as the subject of this evening’s symposium is the estate, we won’t let it delay us further here. But I will pause long enough to doff a cap to the ultimate homologation special, the 240 Turbo Evolution (also a coupé) which won the 1985 European Touring Car Championship, sandwiched between Tom Walkinshaw’s Jaguar XJS the year before and Roberto Ravaglia’s BMW 635CSi the year after. So after all the rallying successes of the Amazon, it’s not as if Volvo was exactly a stranger to competition, even back then. But I digress.

There were, I think, two things about those old Volvo wagons that created that small and most unlikely space in my heart for them. First, they had humongously, ridiculously, implausibly big boots. After they died, the most commodious estates on the market were Mercedes-Benz E-Classes, but they soon ceded the territory to the current holder, the Skoda Superb Estate. And with a 660-litre boot, it is indeed big in the back. But a Volvo 740? Try 992 litres, or 2123 litres with the seats down. The poor old Skoda can’t even muster two grand. You could emigrate in one of those old Volvos.

The second reason they earned if not my love then certainly my admiration is that they were damn-near indestructible. Two of the three highest mileages ever recorded by cars are Volvos, including a 1979 245 GL that had already clocked 1.63 million miles when last heard of four years ago. Those with mere striplings that had done a trifling quarter of a mill would describe them as ‘nicely run in’.

Indeed it seemed to be imperative that if you were going to get a Volvo estate, it had to be the oldest, most knackered example you could find. ‘There are two bits of trim missing, the headlining’s falling down and half the knobs have broken off. Never been serviced you say? Excellent, I’ll take it.’ I wondered if there was some factory somewhere that specialised in ‘pre-ageing’ Volvo estates, attacking them with baseball bats, winding forward their odometers, and garnishing their interiors with chewing gum, empty packs of Marlboro Lights and associated dog-ends. Perhaps there was an option you could tick called the ‘Distress Pack’ that would make sure your car had been driven through a pre-set number of hedges, bounced off a couple of walls and had hosted a pie chucking party before being delivered. Since I discovered they sell brand new jeans with holes in them, nothing would surprise me.

But when I really try to work out what it is that triggered this sneaking affection for a very particular kind of old Volvo estate, I can only conclude it’s the same thing that made me love the Ferrari F40, my Series III Land Rover and my 1950s 2CV. These are cars that know what they are for and don’t trouble themselves with anything else. There is a purity of purpose, an honesty if that doesn’t sound too pompous, that appeals directly to me.

One more thing, and I accept this is a bit of a stretch but I believe it: old Volvo estates are cool, more cool by far than any of the more designer Volvos that followed them. And I’ll tell you this: if you turned up at some posh school in a scruffy 1980s 245DL, all faded paint, rusty arches and bent panels, I’d walk past all the Range Rovers to get a better look at it.

If you then stepped out wearing a threadbare jumper with a hint of dried egg welded to its front, I’d know you could be anything from a farmer to a duke. But whatever your background, I’d know too that you were a proper person, and that you were stepping out of a proper car.