The typical sage advice here is to not buy someone else’s project. Well, today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe V8 Volvo is someone else’s else’ s project, so that’s okay right? Now, what about that price?
Fully 67% of you felt that yesterday’s wide-ass and weird-ass ’74 Dodge Superior Ambulance wasn’t d’bomb at its asking price. A few of you were also a little more than freaked out by its appearance. Because of that, today I’m giving you something a little more in your comfort zone.
Actually the hell with comfort zone, this 1988 760 wagon with a Mustang 5.0 should feel like an old pair of jeans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and your fat granny’s lap all rolled into one. This silver brick checks off most of the car nut bueno boxes what with it being a boxy as fuck wagon and sporting a 225-horse Mustang V8.
There are a couple of boxes that go unchecked however, one being that of busy time for your right hand and left leg, this car having Ford’s 4-speed AOD. It’s also - as is pretty obvious - a project car, having had its Volvoness usurped by an American driveline in someone’s garage, and as we all know - along with eating bargain antipasto, screwing crazy, and jokes in private emails about bombing the Fed - buying someone else’s project is generally a bozo no-no.
But the thing of it is, this isn’t the seller’s project! He bought it off of the original builder and has a lot of paperwork from that project to prove it. On an unrelated note I had a project this morning that entailed a lot of paper, and as a result I’m thinking about laying off the Taco Bell for a while. Anyway, this guy says he’s been using it as a daily driver for a couple of years, and that means it’s probably not going to kill its new owner the first opportunity it has.
The car itself doesn’t look too shabby either. The silver paint seems clean and the bodywork appears reasonably dent free and with no obvious signs of road rot. Plus the ad notes the additional enticement of two sets of wheels/tires- the original Volvo wheels with winter tires mounted to them, or summer stock comprised of a set of Borbet (not Bobit, dude) 16-inchers wrapped in soon to be slicks.
On the inside its as roomy as a moose’s antlers and appears to be upholstered in Siberian defrosted mammoth hide. On the haz a sad side there’s no A/C, the condenser having gone missing, and there are issues with the radio and the driver’s seat recliner. Big whoop on each of those, amiright?
The biggest problems with this car appear to be an as-yet untraced electrical drain that leaves the battery flatter than a fat baby's poop after 48 hours of sitting, and the fact that it gets about 20 MPG highway. But then, what would you expect from a V8-equipped large wagon? That engine is supposed to have 100K under its fanbelt, while the car itself has 290,000 miles. That’s no big deal because as we saw earlier this week, Volvos are the untreatable STDs of car world and will never go away.
The question of course is whether this particular one’s $3,500 price tag is worth someone driving this one in particular away. What do you think, is that a fair price for a V8lvo wagon, even if it’s someone else’s work? Or, does that make this a 760 that has you doing a one-eighty?
You decide!
Denver Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to bigblockbear for the Hookup!
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