Early last week I floundered about trying to post photos of my 17 y/o son’s ’91 240DL after a front-end collision with a pickup truck. A few people had asked me to try again, and I finally mastered the art of using the gallery (little matter of reading instructions)! The original thread is long buried, so I am reposting. Pardon me if I am wasting bandwidth unnecessarily.





First, my son and his passenger were uninjured, even though to our mortification they were not wearing seat belts. :-( That truck must have been riding pretty high, because while the fascia came off, the front bumper was not bent. The air bag did not deploy, so the collision speed was probably lower than the 40 mph estimated by the insurance adjuster. Even though the truck impacted above the bumper the Volvo design still performed well. The hood remained latched! Because the hood remained closed, it buckled, and kinetic energy that might have been transferred to the passenger compartment was harmlessly dissipated. I suppose the moral of that story is to check and maintain your hood latch! I had adjusted the latch on this car only two months ago to make it close more snugly.

You may be interested in the details of the insurance settlement. The adjuster offered $2600 with the car as a full write-off. They claimed the salvage value was about $650. I countered by asking for $2500 with me keeping the car. They responded with $2300 with me keeping the car. We finally settled on $2350 with me keeping the car.

May you or your loved ones never have to experience an automobile accident, but if you do, I hope the outcome is as happy as this one was.
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'88 240DL, '91 240