I'll grant you that Volvo sedans are slightly faster, better balanced, and quieter, they really do not do much else better than wagons.

The wagons can really carry stuff. I brought a complete B16 engine and transmission home in our '96 855R. It dropped three inches when we loaded it, but the Nivomat shocks had it up to normal height within a 1/4 mile.

Our '90 744 TI was a great hot rod and really grew on me while I drove it. If you go to the gallery, search for 700s and go to page 17, you can see Evander. He is black with tinted windows, white hub caps and a white stripe all around the recess in the lower body (it's reflective) My neighbor's daughter drives him now and he is over 250,000 miles! If you want to have some fun, put some narrow, half-worn snow tires on and go drifting. I could easilly drift 1/2 way around a rotary near my house any time the cops weren't around.

I honestly think that in some models, they designed the wagon first, then cobbled up the sedan.

In our 745, we brought home a large refrigerator 33w x 35d x 67h once, but our record is an amoire that measured 43w x 28d x 76h!!!

Purists will know that that size is larger than the tailgate opening, which it is! We had to angle the fancy top to get it through the rear opening. and once inside, the top touched both grab handles in the back seat. We also had to put the front seats all the way forward and straight up to get it to fit.

My wife and I, 5'9" and 6' had our knees against our chins (almost) but we drove her home.

My daughter drove her '88 745 from Edmonton to Seattle so loaded that she had to mail two boxes home so that her sister could meet her and go down the west coast, over the Rockies and through Denver on their way back to Massachusetts. That wagon with 230,000 never faltered.

It is SO much fun to blow the doors off a kid with your soccer-mom Volvo wagon.

In the last issue of Rolling, a writer finally got a turbo Volvo wagon, and he writes about how nice it is. The best is mentioning that on the last exotic car test he was on, both photographers had Volvo turbo wagons because they were the only cars that could carry their stuff and keep up with the test cars!
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'96 855R,'64 PV544 driver, '67 P1800 basket case, '95 855, '95 854, the first three are mine, heh, heh, 415,000 miles put on 9 bricks