Description
We are reluctantly selling our 1997 Volvo 940 Estate (945).
The car has served us well over the three years we've owned it as a regular driver including a couple of European holidays.
Sadly we're moving abroad and so it must go.
The car is a late "Celebration" Model and so has all the mod-cons and affects of the higher trim 700/ 900 series (such as the semi-leather heated seats, faux-wood interior trims, air-con, 6-CD changer (currently not hooked up as a different stereo is fitted), headlight wipers and heated rear-windscreen and mirrors). It also has the extra rear-facing jump-seats that fold out of the boot floor.
The engine is the 2. 3l red-block low-pressure turbo variant paired with the famously bullet-proof 5-speed manual gearbox, barely broken in at 229, 500 miles. The car passed its MOT in December and so has another 9 months on it.
When we acquired the vehicle we did a load of maintenance work including -
- New springs and shock absorbers all round
- Replaced the drop links, strut bushings and bottom shock mount bushings
- New Front wheel bearings and reluctor wheels
- Fitted a tow-hitch
- New front rubber brake lines
- New pressurised coolant reservoir
- Cleaned Flame-trap, throttle body etc.
- New OEM-spec cat-back exhaust
- New boot lid gas struts
- LED Headlight bulbs
- HT Leads and Battery
- Standard maintenance things (Oil and filters (inc. fuel), plugs (iridium), GB and Diff Oil etc.)
We also got hold of a set of 740 rims with the correct era centre-caps and had them refurbished. The original 940 rims (3 alloy and 1 steel) also come with the vehicle with a set of winter tyres fitted - for that one week of snow per year.
It comes with a pair of Thule roof racks.
Naturally with a car of this age (and mileage) there are some niggles it suffers from, namely -
- Small tear in the driver's seat, and one in the driver's footwell (covered up by mats)
- Slow oil leak, as noted in the MOTs (very rarely needs topping up half a litre every few thousand miles)
- Significant lacquer peeling on the bonnet (but only the bonnet strangely enough)
- Some rust bubbling on the wheel-arches
- Slow coolant leak - assumed to be from the hose joint onto the reservoir - roughly half a litre every thousand miles
- 7th seat (one of the fold-out jump-seats) seatbelt buckle needs replacing if you're going to use it (all others are fine)
- Could do with the air-con gassing and the timing belt doing at some point
It's never given us any trouble and has no major mechanical issues. We've really loved owning this car - it's super practical, comfortable and draws admiring looks. We initially bought this car as we wanted something practical but not depreciating in value (or actually going up) and we also loved the styling (if you can call it that) of the boxy utilitarianism of the iconic Volvo estate.
It also had to have a beefy enough engine, Manual transmission and rear wheel drive.
But we've genuinely loved owning the car - it's ridiculously well considered regarding ease of maintenance, the seats fold completely flat resulting in a 180cm long bed (in which we've slept on a couple of occasions), the tow-hitch has a considerable 1600kg towing capacity and the roof-rack is rated at 100kg static which means it'll take a sizeable tent-box.
The only reason we're selling is that we're moving to Switzerland where the import MOT is comically complicated for old cars and they drive on the wrong side of the road so it would be awkward to daily drive here.
