I am now an old man…
Sold the STi. It was time and I felt bad for using it as nothing more than a DD. It was also going to be just a bit impractical here in another nine months anyway…my wife is expecting our second child in May. I still wanted something fun to drive though. I hate boring cars, so rather than go with one of the usual beater choices, I got looking around for an '03-'04 Marauder at first, then quickly scrapped that idea. Couldn’t find a nice enough example for what I wanted to pay. I got back on Craigslist and had the bright idea to try and find something Swedish. I looked at a couple of Saab 9-5 Aeros at first, but then decided not to go that route due to parts availability. Then I realized that I hadn’t looked at Volvos. My dad had a couple while I was growing up and we had good luck with them. I even took my road test in his '94 940 Turbo back when it was only a year old.
I got searching for whatever I could find in any '95-'97 850 T5 R…couldn’t find anything anywhere close. Got back on Google to do some research and saw that I could get pretty much the same thing, only newer in an S70, which is the 850’s successor. I found a '98 S70 T5A at a small, low volume, independent Volvo dealer out in Webster that only shows cars by appointment. I called him up and set aside a date to go take a look and in the meantime started lurking around on some Volvo forums (yes, there are a few) to see what I should check out before purchasing. I learned a lot. The major things to be concerned with checked out, but it still needed a few maintenance items. It was going to have to do. The STi was sold and the guy that bought it was driving up from Bradford soon. Brought this home the day I sold the STi.
Here she is in all her vanilla white with tan leather splendor…
So it’s not the color/transmission combo I was hoping to find, but it is in really nice shape for a 17 year old car that lived it’s whole life in Jersey. It had been undercoated at some point so there is absolutely zero rust. No engine oil or trans leaks, it drives really well and everything works…right down to the heated seats and power antenna. It’s got a couple of small clear coat issues and a few dings, but it’s par for the course given the car’s age. It makes a surprising amount of mid range grunt as well. It’s quicker that the '12 Malibu LTZ 3.6L that we just got rid of (just for comparison’s sake) and it gets better MPGs than the 'Bu did.
Yeah, so, there you go @91MR2. Try not to laugh too hard at me, guys. I like the car enough to sink more than it’s worth into it to make it nice. I feel it’s a rather underappreciated car that deserves some TLC.
