Ever just look out at your Volvo 240 in the morning and think, “it’s gonna take a lot to take me away from you?” You should consider swapping your car’s grating door chime for something a little more appropriate.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock all these years, “Africa” by Toto is one of the prized staples of 80s cheese-rock. Appreciating this hilariously over-the-top song has become an art form on the Internet. So, Volvo owner Chris Ng one-upped everyone and hacked his 240 to play a simplified version of the song.
The door chime in the Volvo is controlled by a plug-in sound module under the dash, so all it took to install was a quick swap of the stock version for the modified one. The song goes on for a hilariously long time, too—just in case you want to soak it all in for a moment.
Ng told Jalopnik that it’s fairly easy to swap this little module out if you know how to solder things back together. He plans to start a Kickstarter for a small number of cheap, universal modules for people who want to do this themselves.
To make his Volvo play Toto, Ng says that he recorded the song straight to the new module. You can do so with any smartphone or computer. Then the reprogrammed module was rewired into the door ajar circuit for the car—easy peasy.
Here’s the full song the chime is based on, on the off-chance that one of your former coworkers didn’t have an inexplicable appreciation for yacht rock:
All things considered, this collision of retro nostalgia in a brown manual Volvo of all things may just be the best thing we’ve seen all week. We’re as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti that we love this.
UPDATE [11:05 a.m.]: Here’s the exact version of the song used in the Volvo, in case you also need 8-bit Toto in your life:
UPDATE [3/14]: Ng now has a Kickstarter for custom door chimes here, just in case you’d like one of your own.