My Forever Car - Inspired by Moog and his Mini #blogpost

It’s Just a Car. A sentence everyone who likes cars will have heard before, but couldn’t be more untrue. This is the story of my forever car and why it’s more than just a car, how it’s a piece of me and my history, how the darkblue Volvo 850, whose keys are laying on my nightstand as I am writing this is connected to my life through all my life.

It all started with the plain red box 850 my mother had and therefore carried me around in to Kindergarden, school, my friends and all vacations. It’s the first car I remember, I remember how it stood out between all other cars that my friends parents had, how I was always able to spot it in all car parks, how it took me to all these beautiful places in Sweden, Denmark and Italy, how it smelled. How my second older brother first showed me that cars could be cool, by racing it full throttle at 200 kph down the Autobahn with the, as I thought, loud screaming 144 horsepower 5 cylindre working its ass off and me being awe struck by the noise and speed that surrounded me in that moment. From that moment on, I was unknowingly in love with the plain red box and all its bulk. I wanted little Volvo toys, I wanted to know more, I wanted to be there every time it got dropped off at the Volvo dealer for servicing. I even got a Volvo poster from the Volvo museum during the next vacation in Sweden and hung it over my bed. So time went by and then came the shocking day, when my parents swaped the trusty old Volvo for a new Passat (saddest day of my back then young life) so I swore myself at 9 or 10 years old that I will one day own a Volvo 850. I held on to my 850 Modell and toy cars and thought about it from time to time.
With time came other things in my life, like racing Mountainbikes, the additional love for Porsches, (because I found out that a friend of my parents was once an engineer at Porsche) girls, puberty and so on. But through all that time the Volvo poster remained in my room.

More time went by, I got my first car a Golf, which I crashed, my second car a Skoda Octavia, which I crashed thrice and more trouble mounted up in my life as my parents got a ugly divorce and was forced to move from the house I called home, I realised my dream job wasn’t really all that dreamy, my second older brother who got me into Volvo’s, got horribly ill and died later.
So I started thinking in sleepless nights in a concoction of sleep deprivation, a general yoloness, love and the need of something that would give a lot to do about getting a Volvo 850 of my own. Of course I wanted a T5, the infamous Turbo Modell of the plain box of my childhood and so I started looking into it, then thought a test-drive wouldn’t hurt and went to look at one that was closest. And then it got me good, because as I was looking at it and test driving it, all memories were back and plus I was shocked and intoxicated by the turbo petrol engine that pulled so hard. But sadly that first one was a shed, dripping oil everywhere, little bit of rust, missing parts, clearly some trackwork in it, as it had a strut brace, slotted rotors, high performance pads and other things.. so I looked at a second one that was an automatic and it was horrible. After that I thought I found the jackpot: a rare Italien turbo with a 2 litre engine. So I travelled almost three hours south to Stuttgart just to find out that this one was an even worse shed than the first one as the entire front end felt loose and I was seriously unsure if I could make it home. So third one was a no-no. But then suddenly the first I testdrove became much cheaper as the owner seemed to understand the state of his car and so in my deranged mind a plan of fixing it up myself came together, with at that point absolutely no experience in working on cars apart from changing tires and oil.

So I bought it for still too much and started fixing it up piece by piece, detecting all oil leaks and so on. It seemed not to bad to fix because it was just the line of the oil cooler that was leaking and some minor other things like filters, steeringendlinks, tires and cosmetical work on rust and interior. Month went by with it of the road and me fixing and servicing all and every thing until the day it should get the feared German tech inspection called TÜV on which I first drove by an allignment shop. There the plan came to a screatching hold because the play in the front wasn’t caused by worn out endlinks, but a broken steering rack. At that point I was almost all out of money and had no idea what to do next. But as it happened to be I was pissed off and people who knew me were asking whats up and one of them said after I told my story that he knew someone that had a lot of 850 and hooked me up with him.
And it was really heaven when I first visited that guy, four 850 scattered in the big yard a shed full of parts and best of all a two post lift. The guy turned out to be so nice, that we became friends and so he helped me out my misery by offering me a twenty valve 850 that he had just got in with fresh tech inspection winter tires and everything for my more or less still worthless turbo with primer on various panels and a few hundred bucks.
At first I was kind of bummed out that I should just make due with 170 horsepower instead of 226, but then it started growing on me with its immediately throttle response and 6800 rpm redline to which it willingly reved up to (after some help to get it better breathing) and not to mention the feeling of ripping it up a hill on a small road with the windws down, just listening to the engine sing.
In the time I owned it until now I met countless other super nice people who just share the love for Volvo’s, helping each other out just because of being nice. Most impressive was apart from my friend with the great Barn a pilot I called up in Sweden during a vacation there on the lookout for a R spoiler which are really hard to come by in germany. He had one but without the mountingplates, which I really wanted because my car sees often 200+ kph, but instead of just saying no he offered to help me find one from a wrecker and sure enough delivered an address and phone number from a wrecking yard near me where a red spoiler with mounting plates was available. That is a sort of kindness that really warms my heart because it shows that there are so many good people out there that you can really be good to others and help out and not get stuffed yourself.
So that is the story my forever car. It’s a reminder of my early childhood, my now dead brother, a therapeutic tool during the hours of wrenching on and driving it and an eye-opener to the good in the world, a sympathetic car for many people, a home away from home and with its sweet sounding engine just a second gear pull away from an endorphin high. And most importantly it’s always there for me just sitting there and waiting for me to turn the key and go on another adventure or just maybe down to the shops to get food. I never want to miss it from my life.

May it give many more good memories!

P.s:
And I maybe even try to get my little nephew from my other brother on board by giving him a traffic rug and a Volvo and Porsche toycar to christmas this year, so he starts right into the world of gasoline and high-speed..

And here the link to Moogs story of his Mini.