My parents' Volvo
This is my parents’ white Volvo 850, which they’ve just sold. It’s one of only five or six cars that I’ve ever driven in my life, including some cars I drove only one or two times while I was learning how to drive and getting my licenses, and it’s one of only two cars that I’ve driven since September 1997!
Even though I’ve lived far away for most of the past 11 years, I’ve always enjoyed hearing what was happening with the Volvo, from the “check engine” light coming on all the time for no reason to every conceivable part needing to be repaired or replaced by Snider (no first name or title necessary for all the Montgomery County Volvo owners and many from the wider DC area). And then replaced again. And then again. Most recently the air conditioning wouldn’t switch on, which is intolerable for summer commutes, and my parents realized that they’d gotten as much out of this car as they ever would.
Goodbye to the Volvo. I don’t know if I’m ready to greet the Mini Cooper so graciously.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
yeah. i’m really going to miss that car too. apparently i’ve driven a lot more cars than you have, but that volvo was the car i learned to drive on: the automotive equivalent of a first love. she’s a heavy beast and a sweet ride and can get over 500 miles of highway on a single tank! goodbye hot black leather in the summer. goodbye heated seats from before every car had them. goodbye temperamental air-conditioning. goodbye microphone sticking out from when we used to have a car phone. goodbye to a trunk that always seemed to have more space in it than i needed. hahaha – car phones.
Remember when I (and maybe you?) used to arrive somewhere and we had to use the car phone to call Mom and Dad and let them know that we’d arrived safely? That fleeting era was such a weird intermediate step between the old days, when people were basically out of touch for (gasp) hours at a time, and now, when essentially no one is ever out of touch.
Wow. My first car was also a Volvo 850 (from 1995, I believe), although my parents got rid of it long ago. I think they ditched it for a Subaru Forester in the early 2000s. As you described, it had a litany of problems. The heated seats just never worked right–every time you flipped them on, you would blow a fuse. I would keep a pack of spare fuses in the car in the winter, in case there was a day when I wanted to use them so badly that it was worth wasting a new fuse. It was in the shop about 10 times to try to fix it, always unsuccessfully. I’ll never forget when I was 16 and ran over a curb in a parking lot at Montgomery Mall, cracking the oil pan. It cost about $800 to replace (no small sum for a teenager in 1998), whereas in most cars it would have been more like $100. Ultimately, the engine was barely able to get going when it got cold one winter, and my parents were able to get a good deal trading it in.
What’s scary is that family friends down the block from my parents STILL have their 1982 Volvo 240 DL wagon! Unreal.
I think I remember your Volvo. Did you use Snider? Our heated seats were fucked up too. I think the driver side seat always worked, but the passenger side seat hasn’t worked in many years.
That’s an intense love for Volvos if you’re still driving one around that’s almost 30 years old. I remember my parents had a brown Volvo station wagon when I was very young, in the early 1980s. Craig’s family had a blue one that they kept until we were in middle school or thereabout.
No, I want to say we used Marten’s. Wow, I can’t believe I remember that.
Sacrilege!