As of last week I am the proud owner of a 1993 245. I was cruising the local Craigslist looking for priceranges on Volvos, as I plan on selling my 1994 855, and ran into this fancy wagon. I inquired about it asking the two important questions: Does it has cloth interior and is it a manual transmission. Yes and yes? Ok, I needed to see it.

So, after a 5 year hiatus, I am back to the Brick Board. I've knocked the dust off of my Bentley manual and refreshed myself with everything 240.

What I found was the nicest remaining example of a 245 I will probably ever be lucky enough to own. The car has 130k miles on it, but looks only about a year old. The owner kept it garaged both at home and work. It's the only 240 I've ever owned that had zero deterioration issues. The paint is good. Zero dash board cracks. It's quiet and smooth. The interior is just superb. It even has that new Volvo 240 smell! No yellow headlamps. Everything works. It's like bizarro world, since I'm used to keeping my 240s on life support from day one.

The only negative aspects about the car in my opinion are that it has no cruise control and no heated seats. The heated seats I can live without, since it makes the seats softer and they would be prone to failure anyway.

The car has been maintained as needed, but will be getting the royal treatment from now on out. I'm actually selling a car in order to give it a spot in my garage.

Here's a slideshow of photos of the car. I never planned on owning a red Volvo, but beggars can't be choosers.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luketrash/sets/72157604594498334/show/

I'll be doing preventative maintenance and going through the car changing out suspension pieces and whatnot. So I'm sure I'll have questions almost immediately. I need to track down the rear trailing arm bushing tool I built years ago...