"Forrest" (forrest)
08/08/2014 at 16:40 • Filed to: down on the street
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"Forrest" (forrest)
08/08/2014 at 16:40 • Filed to: down on the street | 4
| 6 |
My first car was a Volvo S70. Not a T5 or R; just a garden-variety GLT with the 2.4T and a protozoaic 4-speed automatic. One afternoon, I was driving merrily down the highway, listening to some Linkin Park or whatever kids listened to back in the mid-2000s. I smelled a bit of tobacco-esque smoke, and wondered whether people were smoking cigarettes in the pickup truck in front of me. Soon, the tachometer went to 0, the gas pedal stopped being useful, and I pulled over. Upon opening the hood, I was greeted by flames. The fire department arrived an hour later, followed by a flatbed tow truck bound for the junkyard.
Manual + Hardtop = Unicorn
I just stumbled on a C70 on the streets of Berkeley, CA. Not just any C70, either. This is a unicorn manual , hardtop first-gen C70! More than 5 years after my S70 killed itself with fire, I have developed an unhealthy obsession with the first gen Volvo C70. Sure, it understeers unpredictably and uncontrollably. A slingshot has less turbo lag. They're as rare as hen's teeth, especially in manual hardtop guise. Did I mention that I had a car with roughly the same powertrain, which caught on fire?
Here's the C70's one redeeming quality: it's built on a early 90s platform, it retains the S70's "we forgot to include styling in our budget" face, yet the C70 still looks amazing. In a time when almost every sedan-derived coupe (save the 3-series coupe) looked worse than its four-door counterpart, the C70 looks sleek and athletic while still giving many nods to its utilitarian roots. All that aside, I bet my old Linkin Park CDs sound great on the C70's 6-speaker stereo.
Clarkson sums the C70 up quite well (start at 4:00 into the video):
heliochrome85
> Forrest
08/08/2014 at 16:41 |
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I loved these cars. Too bad their build quality made early 90s Alfas look good.
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Forrest
> heliochrome85
08/08/2014 at 16:44 |
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Agreed. Every time I think about buying an old C70, I think "oh, wait, an E46 M3 might be a cheaper car to maintain."
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heliochrome85
> Forrest
08/08/2014 at 16:45 |
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Shit, a 80s Jaguar might be cheaper.
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Forrest
> heliochrome85
08/08/2014 at 16:47 |
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Hahaha! Shame that the hardtop C70 is too old to be found with DeMuro's favorite Carmax warranty. :)
Racin'Jason001
> Forrest
05/21/2016 at 14:19 |
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Nice! Sorry you had to scrap your old ride.
Nauraushaun
> Forrest
02/12/2018 at 04:11 |
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Hi, did the first one burn to the ground?