With his song Brick, angry piano banger Ben Folds shifted gears from his usual bombastic fare for a haunting and introspective lament. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Volvo 245 Diesel is itself a brick, and also lets you shift gears, but the question is, will you find its price lamentable?
I always loved the Pace Picante commercials just because of the way the shitkickers said New York City! like the name described a thing dug from between a dead hobo's toes. While it was located in Nashville — well south of the Mason-Dixon line — that same derision was dumped on yesterday's 1979 AMC Pacer wagon, its 82% Crack Pipe loss reflecting its price and not how it tasted in Huevos Rancheros.
Oh well, if at first you don't succeed, wag-wag-wagon again, or so we hope. Today we have a blue meanie of a Volvo longroof, and one that comes with the boat anchor-like 2,383-cc Volkswagen D24 diesel under its hood. At least that 75-horse oil burner has the 5-speed M47 transmission for you to play with while awaiting the car to achieve something more than a walking pace.
The seller of this 140,000-mile 245 must have heard of the derision heaped upon Craigslist ads rendered in ALL CAPS. Either that or he is a member of a religious sect were tall letters are seen as idolatrous because his descriptive copy is devoid of capitalization in any form, even the most grammatically traditional.
Maybe making up for that burning bag of poo on the doorstep of the Oxford Style Manual is the fact that the description details the new brake rotors and pads, fluid, and new front tires wrapped around the spoked alloy wheels. The metallic blue paint looks about as good as you could hope for so old a ride, and there don't appear to be any major body flaws, rust or errant pedestrians stuck in the grille that might give pause.
The capitalization-impaired seller notes that he (or she, no reason to ignore the fact that women can be grammatically illiterate as well) used to employ this 245 as a daily driver, managing an amazing 35-38 miles per gallon of the sticky compression-ignitable syrup known as road diesel. That's pretty remarkable, but no less so than the fact that this Volvo's interior seems to have survived the past 28 years with but a torn driver's seat squab as a sign of the times.
And what would you need to pay for this slower than molasses in January but hyper efficient and most likely able to survive both the Rapture and a Nickleback concert Volvo 245? Well, the seller wants $2,000 for his wagon and you now need to vote on whether or not that's a price that could be capitalized upon. See what I did there?
What do you think, is $2,000 a fair deal on this old and slow Volvo? Or, does 2,000 being also the zero to sixty time in seconds make this a wagon not worth the braggin'?
You decide!
Columbia SC Craigslist or go here if the ad disappears.
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