Jalopnik asks the question “What’s your favorite non-Italian Italian car?” Their final answer is the Bertone-designed Volvo 780. It IS a well designed car. I saw one in a junkyard once and it looked cool even with a 1/2 inch of dirt on it. Much better than the pimped-out Bertone 262c.
News this morning has Ford reviewing the sale of Volvo. The market reaction? Ford shares surge 12%! Then Ford shares drop 23%!
After an embarrassing showing of the big 3 in Congress a couple weeks ago, I guess this is part of Ford’s new plan to profitability.
Jalopnik asks the pertinent question: Who should buy Volvo?
Clever dudes leave the 7-11 in their 2 wheel Audi POS. Wonder if it was originally a Quatro?
My daughter Claire has been retching as we approached our car lately. She says it’s the “smell” but I think it’s psychosomatic; she remembers times she had motion sickness and when she sees the car it triggers an upset stomach. Well, today she went and puked in the parking lot of a rest stop. More details and a technicolor photo after the jump…
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Somehow I missed the April 22nd, 2008 “Engine of the Day” post on Jalopnik that honored the Volvo red block. Short but sweet. Nice photo of a custom motor and good comments.
I love these little illustrations from the 1986 user manual. Somehow they popped up from the Volvo USA site.
I pulled the instrument panel again and figured out the problem with the tach install. I had posted to the BrickBoard and a reader pointed out that I probably forgot to plug into the circuit board. He posted a picture and sure enough, that was the problem.
Now that I have a tach I can see this car doesn’t rev very high at all. The only time it went over 3k RPM was today driving 65mph up a long hill with overdrive switched off. I see now the B230F hits peak torque of 136 lb/ft at 2750 RPM. No wonder the red block engine last so long. There’s no pressure.
From the AP, October 27th:
Ford Motor Co. may be joining the ranks of U.S. automakers seeking to shed operations, as a newspaper reported Sunday the industry bellwether is weighing a sale of the slow-selling Volvo brand to BMW AG.
Somehow I don’t see Volvo going to BMW. But I wonder if Ford will sell Volvo.
From Jalopnik:
It’s probably a bad thing to fly a private jet from Detroit to Washington, DC when you’re going to ask Congress to provide you a multi-billion dollar loan to bail you out of a financial crisis. That fact hasn’t stopped Ford’s Alan Mulally, along with the heads of the other automakers, who not only flew to D.C. in the Ford private jet but are, apparently, unwilling to fully cut themselves from the corporate crack that is their private air forces.
ugh
I figured I’d take my mind off the fact that I may not have a job in a few weeks and finally install the tach I pulled from a 244 in a VA junkyard this summer. While I love the big clock in the Volvo instrument panel, I’d also like to see what’s going on with the engine. Unfortunately I now have no clock, no tach, no odometer and no speedometer.
The AP reports a massive drop in orders for Volvo trucks from Sweden. Net orders for 3rd quarter 2007 were 42,000. This year it’s 115. One hundred fifteen, period. Third quarter profit sank by 37%.
The company said it expected the European truck market to grow between zero and 5 percent in 2008, down from an earlier estimate of 10 percent. The North American truck market would decline by 10 percent this year, Volvo said, downgrading its earlier forecast of a flat market.
Danske Bank analyst Carl Holmquist said the results were significantly below what the market had expected, especially the slowdown in the order intake.
“Volvo has driven into the recession a little bit too fast,” he said.
I had no idea the extent of Volvo Group. I see their trucks on the road in the US all the time, but didn’t know they also own Mack Truck, Renault Truck and Nissan Diesel. Of course, the auto division was sold to Ford a while ago.
