Few people realize that the 1970 140 came with one of Volvo's early efforts at driver assist technology. The vinyl wrapped steering wheel you can see in the pic of that wonderfully rusted 1970 142GL gave me a flashback. It was of the time I first sat in a brand new 140 in a showroom, a 1970 or 1971 142GL -I had my '66 122S at the time and was likely visiting the parts department. The bright showroom lights were coming in through the open sunroof. Looking through the stock vinyl wrapped steering wheel I noticed something new and different with the instrument cluster. It was a warning device to let you know when you were going over the speed limit. Like the Amazon series, the early 140s had a linear speedometer -it was actually a rotating sleeve with a spiral white marking to give you the effect of a moving white line as it rotated behind a slit. Below the speedometer was a sliding arrow to indicate the posted speed so you could more easily notice when you were going over the limit. As you went past a speed limit sign on the highway you would simply slide the plastic indicator to the posted speed. In truth, it was more like cruise control -you set your target speed so you could more easily monitor how you were doing. That feature, which few ever bothered with, was lost when Volvo went to dial speedometers -1972 as I recall.

To quote the president of Volvo (USA) at the time, Sig Johnson, "As is true of any quality product, it's the small things that count in the 1970 Volvos." Volvo seemingly didn't have much in the way of major improvements to brag about for the new 1970 models and built an ad campaign around that slogan, see SMALL THINGS COUNT IN 1970 VOLVOS -Volvo(USA).

Note that 1970 was the first year for tinted glass all round, flow through air ventillation (out under the rear window, rear side vent in wagons), side marker lights, rear window defog, the charcoal gas evap cannister, inertia reel seatbelts and, last but not least, a key left in the ignition warning buzzer (later a chime). I'm sure we're all familiar with how irritating that chime can be when we're trying to working on our cars with the door open. It took another 20 years for Volvo to give as another of those "small things that count" as a door switch that you can push in and twist-lock to temporarily disable that chime and the dome lights -I can see a few of you now rushing out to discover that trick.
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Dave -still with 940's, prev 740/240/140/120 You'd think I'd have learned by now