The Owner
Of the 2 cars I’ve bought in my life, both have been Volvo wagons. In 1993 I took out a loan to buy a used Volvo 740 Turbo. I loved that ride and I put a lot of miles on it in the short time I owned it. But after making a couple of day trips to New York city from my home in Virginia I realized I was ready to move from the auto-dependent suburbs to the walkable metropolis. No more silver brick for me.
It wasn’t a problem living in Hoboken, NJ without a car as everything is walkable and public transit is abundant. But in 2004 my wife gave birth to the first of our 2 daughters and I knew that lugging strollers and crap onto buses and taxis wasn’t the way to go. I was in the market for an auto.
I’d been under the delusion that I was going to buy a new car. I was looking at Chevy’s Malibu Maxx, the weird Chevy/ Saab hatchback with mega sunroofs and a roomy rear. I thought I’d use my annual bonus as a down payment and start making car payments. Then I discovered Dave Ramsey and got some perspective. With our massive student loans it just didn’t make sense to have car payments so I began looking for a used car I could pay cash for. I expected the bonus to be as good as it had been the previous year. Subaru Legacy and Outback wagons were in the picture, but unfortunately they were not meant to be. When the check came and Uncle Sam took his chunk, I was left with a small wad of cash to find transportation for my family of 4.
With only $4k in my pocket, my dreams of SS performance went out the window and were replaced with 3 primal concerns: safety, reliability and carrying capacity. There’s not a wide selection of cheap cars that meet that criteria. One was the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. Big trunks, roomy seating, vinyl seats in the back to easily clean kid’s puke, and solid enough to keep us safe. But the V8 engine was more than we needed, and parallel parking in Hoboken would be a tough task.
I’d never been attracted to the 240, but soon realized it was the best bet for the money. But it had to be black or red and it had to have mags. I managed to find a decent specimen on eBay, but I still think I paid more than I should have for it.
I had no idea how enjoyable it would be to work on, and it gives me an opportunity to get away from the computer and scrape the skin off my knuckles. It’s a very simple setup, without a ton of gadgets or computers. I’m not much of a mechanic, but I can turn a wrench and check a dipstick. If you see me around town with grease and grime under my fingernails, you’ll know what I did over the weekend.
