Junkyard Find: Volvo 240 With Rare BMWization Package
Most of the time, a car’s final owner doesn’t realize that his or her ride’s next stop will be The Crusher, but some are very aware that the Automotive Grim Reaper will be coming for their wheels soon. Sometimes such an owner glues crap all over the car, and sometimes disturbing cut-and-paste body modifications are in order. In this case, the owner of Volvo 240 must have thought something like, “Hey, Sweden, Germany, what’s the diff?” and applied a quick dose of Bavarianitude to the boxy Swede. I prefer it when a car’s last owner turns it into a road racer, but I think this low-budget customization is worthy of a Junkyard Find.
OK, so the space between the lip of the hood and the top edge of the grille needs some filler, but otherwise this might look convincing at 200 feet, on a foggy night.
You’d expect zip-ties and/or plumber’s tape for this installation, but some fairly substantial materials were used instead.
Though this car sports the two large round headlights of the 1975-76 US-market 240, it appears that this is a later-model car with some hooptily-installed headlight buckets.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Maybe the BMW facia is from the 2002 used in the current TD Ameritrade ads. The one that "needs a new transmission" has a generic front.
You can de-grill an E28 very easily. My Ranger sports a rondel hood emblem sticky taped to the hood, and a Kidney tied onto the grill. I have contemplated fitting the quad headlight buckets, but it is too work for a whimsy. .