#volvo

Yep, we're going back to the wagon well with today's used car of the day. What do you expect? We're journalists. We're obligated to love wagons.

Is it wagon time? It's always wagon time around these parts. And this 1998 Volvo V90 is one of fewer than 10,000 produced. It's one of the last rear-drive Volvo wagons that was built entirely in Sweden.

Today's UCOTD is a speedy Swede with a stick.

Volvo CEO Jim Rowan wants to sell cars directly to consumers, but his statements and moves in other countries have the automaker’s American dealer network up in arms. Speaking on an earnings call, he expressed frustration with Volvo’s distance from its buyers and said the company plans to learn as much as possible from the new sales model in the U.K. before rolling it out to other countries.

Volvo Cars is reintroducing its subscription model in California, despite having previously gotten in trouble for violating the state's franchise laws. While the automotive industry has attempted to hype the premise for years, vehicle subscription services haven't gotten much love from consumers and tend to exist in a legal gray zone that makes regulators uneasy. We even bashed them years ago for being one of the most expensive ways to get into an automobile, with only a modicum of features to help rationalize the added expenditure.

In service of promoting its own sustainability goals, Polestar has opted to offer seating with small print that details the carbon footprint of your chosen upholstery. Though it doesn’t actually matter whether you’ve selected wool, Nappa leather, or faux-leather vinyl (which Polestar calls MicoTech) because the company appears to have labels ready for every option. It’s commercialized virtue signaling at its finest and will become commonplace on every model it sells, starting with the 2024 Polestar 3 SUV. 

It's that time of year. Time to look back, take stock of the year that's just passed, do some self-reflection, and think about the best and worst cars we drove in 2022.

Volvo recently announced the EX90, a three-row EV with serious safety tech. Though the automaker only showed off one version of the new vehicle, company executives have hinted that other variants are in the works. 

This super rare 1975 Volvo TGB11 utility comes to us from Richmond, Virginia.

Volvo is currently launching the EX90 electric SUV -- this may explain a sudden influx of social-media posts I've seen from Sweden over the past few days -- and apparently, the brand snuck a news nugget into its presentation.

Volvo began selling its now-legendary brick-shaped sedans and wagons here in the 1968 model year, with the 140, and continued with the rear-driven sensible square Swedes all the way through the 1998 S90/ V90. Of all those cars, though, the most iconic is the 240. The first of the 240s showed up in North America for the 1975 model year, and here's one of them: a 245 DL wagon in a Denver self-service boneyard last summer.

Volvo built the 200 Series for nearly 20 years and the owners of those sensibly rectangular machines tended to keep them for decade after decade, so I have no problem finding plenty of discarded examples during my junkyard travels despite the last ones rolling off the assembly line in 1993. Most of those machines have been the four– cylinder/ four– or five– door cars, though, because more cylinders and/or fewer doors didn’t seem stolid enough for your typical American Volvo shopper. In fact, prior to today, I had documented as many junked 262C Bertones as 242 two– doors (and just a single 264 sedan). Now I’ve found this rusty 242 in a self-service yard between Denver and Cheyenne.

Volvo and Starbucks are teaming up on a pilot program to explore the installation of electric-vehicle charging stations at various Starbucks locations.

In North America, the Volvo Brick family first appeared with the 140 in the 1968 model year, and the sensibly square Swedes remained on sale here through the last of the S90s and V90s (formerly known as the 960) in 1998. I’ve managed to find junkyard examples of all of these cars, including such oddities as the 262C and 780 Bertone Coupes, but the Volvo 164 has been a tough one; prior to today’s Junkyard Find, I had documented just a single 164. On a recent trip to a snow-coated yard between Denver and Cheyenne, I found another: this scorched and punctured ’70.

There’s a meme floating around, as memes do, with little localized variants. The one I see here in my little slice of Ohio reads something like: “Treat yourself like Interstate 70. Never stop working on yourself, no matter how much it inconveniences others.” Like most humor, there’s a bit of truth there – it always seems as of I-70 west of Columbus stretching at least to Indianapolis is in a constant state of either construction or in need of construction.

It was here on the pockmarked slab west of town I found myself driving on a brisk Sunday morn in the 2021 Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar Engineered, hoping to experience the floaty-but-controlled ride I knew from my old 740 wagon and other spawn of Gothenburg. Not here. That Polestar Engineered badge adds a serious dash of sporting intent to the midsized crossover – a car already quick from three, count ‘em three, power adders to the ubiquitous two-liter four.

Really, this crossover has the feel of a buttoned-down hot hatch. How does it work, as the Brits like to say, on the school run?