This is a 1984 244DL that was wrecked this weekend. The car is now sitting at a towing company 2 blocks from my house. The pictures dramatically show how good the design of the car was- the "crush zone" did exactly what it was intended to do.
These cars were the safest car you could buy then. The question has often arisen as to how safe they are today, with a little rust. This car had a lot of rust. It's rusted through in the rockers, trunk, door bottoms, and front floors. It STILL did it's job and saved the occupants. The interior space has minor intrusion on the bottom of the floors on the right side. The windshield is barely broken, partly due to the hood flexing up and hitting it.
I'd guess this was close to a 50-mph impact. I wasn't able to verify that with the garage personnel. The RF tire is stuffed to the firewall. The bumper is pushed past the centerline of the RF strut tower.
Yet the doors all open, and the door sheetmetal is not creased. That's simply amazing for a vehicle that's well past any reasonable design lifetime.

I hope this never happens to you! This is part of why we drive Volvos, and it feels good knowing that they're always a safe car.



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Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: '87 244DL/M47- 229K, 88 744GLE- 218K, 82 245T-181K Also responsible for the care and feeding of: 88 745GLE, 231K, 87 244DL, 239K, 88 245DL, 246K