....generations of cars, that is, and it's happening all over again. In the Washington DC area, there used to be lots of 140s. I mean LOTS of them, but then, in the late 80s and early 90s, they quite suddenly became nearly extinct, due, I believe, largely to valve seat recession from the discontinuance of leaded gas. At the time, they were just old used cars, and nobody cared very much, and didn't feel like spending the money to have hardened seats installed. 140s didn't stand out very much by their appearance from the other vehicles on the road at the time, unlike 122s which were already "vintage-cool" and therefore got saved in larger quantities. It didn't help that 140s were fairly rust-prone and that most of them, by the time they were 15-20 years old, were showing their age.

As I said, this is a generational thing, and it's happening again, right now. When the 120s and 140s were dying off en masse, the 240 and the 740 were current models. Now it's those cars' turn to disappear, and the 240 seems to have taken on the role of the 122 and become vintage-cool, and the 740 is today's 140 equivalent---the better of the two cars, but the one nobody is bothering to save. Though the causes are different (the later cars, particularly the 7s, are much better rustproofed than their 70s counterparts, and the B230 engines are just about bulletproof) most of these vehicles are one major repair away from the junkyard, due to being worth almost nothing (with the exception of really nice, clean late 240s, which are already bringing a premium price) so if you ever wanted a 240 or 740, now is the time to get it, before they're all gone too, after which (with the exception of the 940, which is nothing more than a revised 740) there are NO MORE real Volvos. When these are gone, that's it, and don't try to tell me about 960s, or 850s, or any of the other late model vehicles that carry the Mars/Iron/Male symbol badge----though some are decent cars, judged on their own merits, they no longer have any of the characteristics that make a Volvo a Volvo: extreme durability, mechanical simplicity leading to ease of repair, and (with the exception of the 960) rear wheel drive.