For $2,500, This 1986 Volvo 244 Could Be A Friend For Life
Just as you may never discover how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, no one may ever learn just how long a Volvo 200-series can really go. It's like the Viagra of cars! Today's
Nice Price or Crack Pipe 244 looks like it's going in style, but does it also come with a price that can't be licked?
How would you get rid of a zombie? Crowbar though the skull? Decapitation? By becoming excessively clingy and so blind to their needs for personal space that they eventually are forced to push
you away and change their Facebook status to dead... and single?
Alternatively, you could just run them over with yesterday's
Cranberries song-channeling 1997 Dodge Ram Van. If you choose that last option however, keep in mind that its 65% Crack Pipe loss means that your peers will think that zombie kill was too damn expensive.
You know what's another sort of zombie? The Lazarus-like Volvo 200-series which never seem to die. Hell, I've seen them in the junkyard looking tons better than half the cars still on the road, and pissed off to not be out there still, getting it done.
With 155,000 on the clock, I don't know if this
1986 244 is settling into middle age, or if it's just getting warmed up. The ad notes that the car is very reliable and has never let its present owner down, nor has it ever left him stranded. Well, duh, it's a Volvo 244.
It's also sporting grey primer over a luminescent blue cloth interior. Ahh, color coordinated interior/exteriors, where have you gone? The ad notes that the car has been lowered, but it doesn't look stupidly so in the pics. It looks just dropped enough that you can play that song by WAR (no, not Cisco Kid) and feel like it's all about you. A roof rack fortunately regains some of the lost height.
Other features include a straight pipe exhaust so your neighbors can enjoy the car too, and a set of what are described as rare porch wheels. I'll just leave that there. Mechanicals are of course Volvo's sturdy B23F and four-speed manual. Aside from the air cleaner, the engine bay looks relatively clean and stock, while inside the seat have those headrests that look like Dr Who protagonists.
There's some discussion in the ad related to the brakes and clutch but the apparent aversion to proper (or any) punctuation makes all that a bit hard to discern. There's also that wonky headlight evident in the pics that probably should have been aligned before the seller thought to hit up the Craigslists.
I really like these old Volvos, they're slow, they're boxy as hell, and like a Terminator, they seem to never die unless you crush them in an industrial press or drop them in a vat of molten metal where the really good ones will give you the thumbs up right before they die.
This one looks to be a solid citizen, and we now need to decide if it seems worthy of its $2,500 asking price. What do you think, does this 244 seem priced right? Or, while perhaps miles to go before it sleeps, comes with a price that's just too damn steep?*
You decide!
Seattle
Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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*Apologies to zombie Robert Frost.