Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Re: The last good looking volvos were ...
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>That's for sure, they always looked like they were moving 100 mph even when sitting still. I came close to getting one twice, but ended up not liking the interior all that much. And then there's that Volvo add in which the car comes tearing into a courtyard and wallows around as it tries to stop, with the narrator spouting the soft ride or controllability or some such nonsense clearly not true based on the wallow alone.
Pam
Re: The last good looking volvos were ...
Marv
>I once had the misfortune of having to drive a friend's Volvo, small sports kind of thing. Don't know the model, don't really care. The emergency brake lever was located on the left side of the drivers seat. I'll let you imagine how it felt trying to get in and out of the car. You wanted to be very careful during the process.
The brake, clutch and gas pedals were so small and so close together you couldn't step on one without stepping on the one next to it. Worst car I ever drove. It was around 1971 or so. I will assume that the designers at Volvo made a few improvements over the years so that the quality matches the price to some extent.
Needless to say, I'm not a fan of Volvo,s
Marv
Re: WKRP
dave brown
>Wow, that's a dated reference, something like pulling out a Les Nessman quote . . . .
;-)
Re: WKRP
"RJ" Whelan
>.... and in the world of golf, Chy Chy Rod-ri-cweez shot 3 below par; maybe he'll do better tomorrow and shoot par or above ..... :-)
Re: They got a lot better later
Glenn Madsen near San Francisco
>We bought my wife a 1997 850 T5. Some serious suspension and gittyup on that little sedan. It turns out the California Highway Patrol had some they were using as pursuit vehicles on I-5 down the Valley for several years. She puts about 400 miles a month on it now, just around town.
I'd looked at a 240 years before, and would have bought one, if the console in the front had left room for my knees. It had a serious case of the plain, however. Good car, though.
I prefer saab's for marginally functional vehicles
John in NM
>Look great, but the 72 I had was more often broken than not. Still have a soft spot for those.
Re: penultimate of ugly
mike hamilton
>Second only to Citreon (sp?). My first SAAB was a '72 95 and I've driven nothing but SAAB since then. 12 years on the first, 15 years on the second and 8 on the current. So I'd beg to differ on the marginally functional label.
Regards,
Mike Hamilton
Plainfield, IN
Favorite WKRP quote....
Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia
>Was the one made after the disasterous "live turkey drop". I think it went " as god is my witness, I thought they could fly"JR
Re: penultimate of ugly
Frank D. in Montreal
>Hi Mike,
Citron is "lemon" in French, hehe. I had a 69 Citroen until the year 2000 (didn't buy it new though). What an amazing car; the air suspension rocks. 90 horses under the hood, but it could do 100 mph no prob.
Ahhh, fuel infection...
John in NM
>Mine was a 99, and in many respects was a great car - most of the problems I had were due to age and stupidity (mine mostly). I believe it was one of the first fuel injected models so I never had trouble with that. My parents had a 76 that was probably the worst car I've ever come across, with the exception of their 87 saab. The 76 had an amazing array of bosch fuel injection parts whose sole purpose as far as I was concerned was to fail ;). The 87 might have been ok, but they bought it from a somewhat less than honest mechanic who revived it after his wife had seized the engine (briefly) when she ran out of coolant - in Tucson, in July. For the time in which they were built, I don't think they were really any worse than other cars, we just got a lemon from the factory with the 76 - it happens.
Now if I didn't have so many other hobbies already, I'd take an old 93, 95, or 99 - or better yet one of the Sonnets - pretty much any of them built before 1974.
My dad also had a lot of old jeeps (see a trend here?), and one of my favorite sayings he had was "He who own jeep will know frustration". Anyone who's owned an old F-head probably knows just what that means!
Re: Favorite WKRP quote....
"RJ" Whelan
>Joe ... yes, I thought pretty much everything Gordon Jump said was funny.
I have a niece named Jennifer Marlow (in honor of the Loni Anderson role) - WKRP was my brother-in-law's favorite show; his wife was pretty mad when he admitted where the idea for Jennifer, as a given name, came from ... rj
Re: Ahhh, fuel infection...
mike hamilton
>John,
I was a 2 hobby guy before marriage. Woodworking stayed and shade-tree mechanic'ing the older SAABs left.
Just in case I live long enough to have some spare time while I'm still ambulatory, I have a box or two full of SAAB specialty tools and NOS parts (full set of weatherstrip for doors and glass, leather wheel, some electricals, etc) for a 69-73 95/96 V4. Just in case.....
Mike
Re: Favorite WKRP quote....
dave brown
>Man, naming his daughter (and then owning up the origin) takes more cojones than I could hope to have. lol
Is there a pattern here? (OT and rambly)
Bill Houghton, sunny Sebastopol, CA
>We owned a 69 96 in which my brother in law had put a later V4 when the 2-stroke triple gave up the ghost. Good shoehorn, except he used the original radiator, which was undersized, so it overheated in the summer (cure: turn on cabin heater and sweat).
For about half the time we owned it, I couldn't figure out why they were considered such good rally cars - drove like it had square wheels. Then, one day, I happened to have the freewheeling engaged and went into a freeway offramp too fast - I thought. That little bug woke up and danced around the corner. Then I realized that the Saab engineers had designed those things to be run flat out - as Road and Track used to say, with the throttle treated as a toggle switch. The faster I drove, the more it stuck to the road. I tested this hypothesis quite a bit.
We sold it, finally, because the boys were getting too large for the backseat, but I have wished ever since that we'd had the money to hold onto it. Parts were a problem even when we had it, unimaginable now; one carb rebuild used a carb kit from a tractor that used the same Ford V4.
Re: Is there a pattern here? (OT and rambly)
Mike Hamilton
>Bill,
If the pattern holds, you must have had a name for your 96. My 95 was Glove - think of the profile view and the character from Yellow Submarine. Twins separated at birth. Frodo and freewheelin' Franklin were among the V4's I have known. Nothing has the character of those beasts.
Mike