Our compatriot Mark Tucker is somehow in the middle of yet another move, which means one of us needed to step up and fill in for him a bit this week. Since all of us spend roughly 26-27 hours a day on various car-selling sites, it could have been any of us, but I’m up first.
Also, and this is a terrible idea given my lack of parking infrastructure, but the algo has decided I want a Volvo XC70, and I still continue to see them everywhere. I’ll get there in a second. In the interim, I thought Friday offered two fascinating choices.
My personal vote was for the Pulsar, as I find the appeal of owning a Fiat with the engine in the back drowned out by the fear of owning a Fiat with an engine in the back. As often happens, many of you didn’t agree with me:
I think what I want will be clear today, and I’m also uncertain if you’ll be with me.
2006 Volvo XC70 – $1,750
Engine/drivetrain: 2.5-liter inline-five turbo, AWD, automatic transmission
Location: Vernon Rockville, CT
Odometer reading: 165,285 miles
Operational status: Was great, has a transmission issue
My last Volvo wagon was a 1993 Volvo 240 with that beautiful Ruby Red exterior paint, which is fairly similar to what you see here, so I’m a sucker for this car. It’s also at precisely the mileage I want.
I think old European cars should be purchased in the 140-180k range, as it implies the car has been well taken care of and has probably had the timing belt/water pump service that comes around 100k for most vehicles. At 165k, this is right in the middle.
Also, I like this black leather interior with the extremely green, early 2000s lighting I didn’t know I was missing. I’ve looked at a lot of these interiors on Craigslist, et cetera, and this one seems to be in great shape.
Is there rust? This photo is not helpful, other than sitting on what’s likely a salty road. It doesn’t look fully ripped, but any car in New England for this long probably has rust. It’s just a matter of looking around the car and seeing how atrocious it really is. At this price, though, I can probably live with the rust.
The one flaw in my “buy an XC70” logic is that they’re all automatics (in this country). Having been a part (mostly as a witness) of one European automatic transmission service, my sense is that I still barely understand how these labyrinthine machines actually work.
This one? At least there’s an idea of what’s going on:
Just passed emissions. Was running and driving great and then a check engine lignt came on for a shift solenoid (pictured). It was my spare car and I don’t want to invest
It’s nice of this person to pull out the OBDII and give a potential buyer an understanding of what’s going on (or, at least, one of the things going on). Kits for fixing this seem to range from $75-$200, but that assumes you have the time and space to lower the subframe, which I do not.
This is awfully close to my parents, so I am curious, but then I have two cars I don’t have space to work on or park.
1990 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport Wagon – $2,500
Engine/drivetrain: 3.1-liter V6, FWD, automatic transmission
Location: Keene, NH
Odometer reading: 163,000 miles
Operational status: runs and drives great
It’s been said before, but a Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport is impressive just for how misleading it is. No celebrity ever drove one, and it is neither European nor particularly sporty, other than maybe the nice five-spoke wheels.
Because I’ve been looking at Volvo wagons basically nonstop for two months, I’ll get the algo guessing other cars I might like. This is often a Saab, or a Taurus SHO, although occasionally it’ll toss me something like this.
Hahaha, why? Why? This is not my particular strand of weird, but I respect that it exists, and I think it probably appeals to someone. As a 1990 model, this is the one to have, with the 3.1-liter V6 producing a not terrible 135 horsepower and 180 lb-ft of torque (according to Wikipedia, at least). Given the low weight, that’s probably not super slow.
“The underside of this car is a solid as the top!” is the brag, which means this thing must have been garaged or never driven in the salt, given that it’s in New Hampshire.
Granted, the top is showing some paint wear, so it’s not exactly the best brag.
My favorite feature? Eight seats! Not enough cars have eight seats these days.
So what’ll it be? How would you transport your friends and gear up north? The newer, nicer Volvo with a questionable transmission, or the seemingly too clean Eurosport?
VOLVO. I’d buy it today for the asking price, if it wasn’t 7 hours away. My stepson has one just like it. Those XC70’s are really nice inside, built like tanks & supremely capable in any weather conditions. The Chevy is junk, in comparison.
That price is super tempting, isn’t it?
The Celebrity is so close to my first car (1991 Corsica) I gotta go with nostalgia. Hopefully without the fuel lines rusting out on me.
No, no, a Celebrity is nothing like a Corsica, not even a rental-spec one. For one, the Corsica’s seats are much, much better. Second, the Corsica is lighter and, if equipped with a 2.8 or 3.1 liter V6, a good bit peppier and has a suspension with far less body roll. It also has the benefits of real ergonomics in the control layout. The Celebrity is a penalty box in comparison, with the sole redeeming factor being that the V6 makes it a tolerable malaise-mobile — I’ve driven both cars.
The Celebrity is still steeped in the Malaise era. The Corsica came about along with a host of other GM cars that were leaving that all behind
Perhaps I was fooled by the same blue fabric inside, and white, black and red outside. Never driven a Celebrity, but I do notice it has a different dash.
I had the 2.8, which was a great engine for it.
The Celebrity was on the 1982 A-body platform, shared with the Cutlass Ciera and others. It was really just a warmed-over derivative of the older X-body platform. The four-cylinder versions couldn’t get out of their own way, and the handling aspired to the level of a wet noodle.
The Corsica/Beretta were on Chevy’ L-body platform, and the rest of GM was using the N-body for their similar cars — all of which were developed as a full replacement for the old X-platform, and had more in common with the smaller J-body than anything else. However you look at it, the Corsica and its siblings/cousins were all much more modern cars. Even the most basic 4-cylinder versions had at least adequate power, they were comfortable, and their ride/handling was anything from safely competent to surprisingly good depending on suspension packages. They were part of GM’s complete turnaround from malaise-era complacency to building actually competitive cars.
The Volvo is the nicer car. In this case, the Celebrity is the better car.
It will be cheaper to keep running over the long haul, which is precisely what you need from a shitbox.
“the seemingly too clean Eurosport”
Are we looking at the same car??? The Chevy is a bit rough. The upholstery and carpet are worn, stained, and faded, the dashboard is faded, there are some issues with the paint (rear hatch, trim pieces below the front bumper, grill, etc.), and it appears to have a very low quality window tint. This is not a particularly nice example of a Celebrity. I might pay $2500 for 10/10 Celebrity, but I wouldn’t pay anywhere near that amount of money for a 20 footer like this one.
I would roll the dice on the Volvo. This could be a great deal if it ends up being relatively cheap to fix.
Rear-facing seats equate to a new definition of a vomitorium for me.
But a front-bench, column-shifting, automatic, American car would certainly exclude any sense of sport. The Chevy is fully grandparent-mobile.
I’m in.
Celebrity! Always wanted a GM mid-size box. They look cool, were mildly comfortable, and drove like crap. Mom rented a Cutlass Ciera and tossed me the keys. The whole drive I kept thinking “I can’t believe this is a new car!” Still want one though.
How delightfully masochistic of you! The Celebrity is definitely an iconic GM car, as a representative of its era. It’s like a late-malaise-era exemplar. It looks modern, yet the driving experience just oozes with the pure essence of Malaise with a capital “M”. It’s simultaneously cromulent and awful. Enjoy your self-flagellation. 😉
What?! I just want a fwd GM a-body. It’s the perfect metaphor for a late gen-x’er. Education & upbringing was stuck in the past while my employer expected me to expand into the future without any modern technology or process. Meanwhile I witnessed my elders enjoying their relaxed and fruitful past while simultaneously watching my juniors enrich themselves due to societal advancements. All I’m left with is recollecting struggles but appreciating my accomplishments. It’s a freaking celebrity, and I love it.
Ugh, I’m an early Gen-Xer and I feel your pain. I think I’ve made an entire career out of pissing people off because I’m not from either larger generation before or after me, get no support, and am expected to fail and thereby confirm their bias. Convenient for them to offload work they can’t figure out how to do. So I figure it out myself and get it done, which irritates the piss out of them, but makes it impossible not to keep me and others like me.
Also, for my particular spot in Gen-X, A-bodies were for Boomers. Used subcompact imports, pickups of all kinds and GM J-bodies were the typical cars to have. A few trips where I had to rent a car (instead of driving my old pickup) put both A-bodies and 6-cylinder Corsicas in my hands and I got to experience the night-and-day difference. A couple of years later I was making enough as one of a grand total of three people in an entire company who knew enough about computers to keep things running, so I went new-car shopping — and found that by playing the options list, a Corsica could be had with the Z52 package that was one of the more potent GM offerings without spending a lot, not even quite as much as a comparable Beretta. It was a very fun car. Underrated, over-performing. Annoyed a lot of stereotypically obnoxious BMW drivers who thought they owned the road but couldn’t keep up. Kind of a generational metaphor really. 😀
Call me crazy but I always liked the look of the Eurosport wagons. Certainly better than any other domestic wagon of that era.
I like the XC70s but, as a crusty New Englander, nothing is worse than having to work on a crusty New England car.
Celebrity FTW. A body bench seat wagons are awesome. That 3.1 sounds great too. You dont see these in the wild too often. The Volvo is broken anyway.
This is a day of “I’ll walk”, neither one does anything for me. A Volvo with mech issues or a generic Chevy. Meh.
Celebrity. “Has transmission issue” is enough to knock the Volvo out of the running; even if it had the same issue the Celebrity is a lot more approachable.
no AWD to deal with either.
My first car was a celebrity almost identical to this one, except mine was an 89 with the 2.8 FI engine. Same white over blue…outside smelled faintly like burning oil, and inside was an olfactoral cacophony of Taco bell, the resulting farts, tree air fresheners desperately trying to mask both of the above, and whatever horrendous locker-room-esque must that was generated following playing drums in a punk rock band. It was an honest and decent car, and the 2.8 was surprisingly quick in it.
I can still smell it in those pics, and that velour upholstery soaks it right up. So I’m going with the Volvo.
I believe that scent is Eau de Merdebox
Late last year I shopped for and eventually bought a used Polestar. As a result the algorithms are crammed my YouTube and FB and podcasts full of Volvo commercials, but not Polestar commercials. Odd.
CT plate with XX-1234 pattern indicates an older owner who likely cared for the car more carefully. That pattern is OLD. My parents and grandparents had plates like that. AW means it was probably initially issued in the mid 1960s.
As for the XC, which was my pick here, its not likely JUST the solenoid. I did the solenoids in one of my S60s – there’s a Sonnax Zip Kit (and a bunch of info) that can help or maybe fix it.
DIY is a little involved. You need to support the engine from above (a pair of 2x6s across the engine bay with a lifting eye to connect to the engine lift point), loosen and space the subframe and then remove the trans pan bolts, some of which I found to have corroded socket heads (torx) to it took careful work with a small cold chisel and hammer to loosen. Replaced with hex cap hardware.
The solenoids are in there.
You’ll also want to flush with 3309 spec trans fluid – a couple of buckets and a hose arrangement on the cooler likes will work – it takes quite a bit before it runs clear.
At this point, however, the trans probably isn’t as expensive as it was in my time of ownership. The AW55-50 was used in a bunch of GM (including Saab and Saturn) stuff, Nissans, and, of course, Toyotas (AW= Toyota).
Parts are cheaper when they come from other brands boxes. For example – you may need a rebuild, and that will require a new valvebody (these are multilayer, complicated things that wear – the bores get enlarged where the valves move and cause pressure losses – the Zip kit parts address this). I BELIEVE an Equinox VB cross-refs to the Volvo. You may have to adapt wiring connectors (depin, use old connectors, repin).
Anyway. That’s a lot of car for less than two grand, even if a trans swap ir repair is another 1509-2K
My thought, too. At that price, there’s room to dump some cash into the Volvo to get it back in shape. If everything else on the car is solid, it’s priced attractively enough to have room to toss in some time and money to put it right and have a nice car in the end.
A CT plate “AW-nnnn” (four digits) would indeed be from the 50s or 60s, but the pictured plate is “AW-nnnnn” (five digits) which means it’s no older than 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Connecticut
Maybe there are better pix of the plates in the Fartburp post, but since I’m not a member, I can’t see it. The one photo here featuring the plate is easily misread as AW–1234 at a glance.
My formative car & license plate ID’ing years were during the AW–1234 years (early ’70s; the years you cited didn’t feature a space or punctuation – AW1234 is not the same as AW–1234).
I thought “damn, they’ve had that plate number a
wicked long timewhile” before seeing that extra digit. You’re correct about the 2015 start for that string.Yeah – I missed the final digit
AHA – I didn’t even see the additional digit!
Oops!
I’d take a chance on the Volvo’s transmission before I’d go anywhere near the Celebrity. No real reason, just a preference for Volvo’s in general.
What I really want is one of the older, boxy, Volvo wagons. A 740 Turbo with the manual ‘box would have me jamming my finger down hard on the “Buy” button.
It would be more expensive, but Good Things never come cheap.
I’ve always loved the looks of Volvos of that era. I don’t really like the new ones. As I have posted before, I have neighbors that moved to the PNW from Nebraska that had a beautiful V70R and traded it in on a used, slightly smaller and bit dinged up Lexus SUV. I would have been tempted to buy it for more than wherever they bought the Lexus. OTH, I know European cars can/almost always are expensive to rehab.
You mentioned the green lighting on the IP. I absolutely loved the blue back lighting of my 2001 Jetta TDI’s IP. I could adjust to green. I despised the red backlighting on a friend’s BMW. Red is my least favorite color. Inside or out. At least the IP on my ’17 Accord is neutral gray. Like a mid-aughts Mercedes taxi.
So, I will bank the $750 delta and cross my fingers for the Volvo. And even if it takes more to get it in shape, the interior alone would be worth it. It’s just gorgeous, compared to a 16-year-older 1990 GM.
The lack of rust on the Celebrity is amazing, given that General Motors almost certainly phoned in the anti-corrosion protection from the factory.
It was one of the only models we owned that we took off the road because of extreme rust.
I would take last week’s clean Celebrity wagon with this week’s pricing, if I’m buying one though.
But they put that Tru-Coat on at the factory!
Team Sweden here. Subframe don’t scare me! After that, it’ll make a great beater with a heater.
The Eurosport is in better shape, and no transmission problem. GM beats Ford this time. I voted for the white car.
I sort of doubt that this Celebrity wagon was never driven in winter. Not exactly my idea of a seasonal car.
Something to consider, we make lots of jokes about “the undercoating” here, but there are legit shops in the rural northeast that do undercoatings (basically spray the entire underside with oil, lol) and a lot of people around here do it every single fall. That’s my bet for this car not being rusty.
Regardless the Celebrity is still a Celebrity, which is shit. The XC70 is excellent. That one looks pretty nice, and might be worth the outlay to get more time out of it. If you can’t sort it out, you at least end up with some extremely comfortable furniture.
DT had it done on a Valiant before he went Hollywood. Could not find anyone to do it near me so did a DIY with Cosmoline aerosol cans.
The one I had wasn’t the Eurosport but it would have been better as a seasonal car. Based on my experience, with snow tires in Iowa there wasn’t anything going to stop the Celebrity going forward including snow drifts, moderately sized deer, or it’s own brakes. I have never experienced a car that would so much rather have the back in the front as that car.
Ain’t voting for a Celebrity wagon again. The last one was mint, this one is a bucket of sadness with stains and a collapsing passenger seatback and no airbags or Volvo crash structure. The Volvo is worth attempting the transmission repair in hopes it isn’t the first in a cascade of expensive upcoming failures. The chipped and rusting lower edge of the tailgate would have me worried, though.
“I think old European cars should be purchased in the 140-180k range, as it implies the car has been well taken care of”
I’d be curious to read an elaboration on this. Does it mean that European cars are not likely to make it to 140K without a lot of fiddly upkeep? To me, this seems like the correct mileage to offload a neglected car before all the deferred maintenance come roaring in like the tide, so I’m not sure I’d be comforted by someone selling it at this mileage.
I am EXTREMELY scared of that solenoid. Like many old Euro beaters, is the awesome interior worth it?
Don’t need AWD, so I’ll rock the Eurosport. Crank up The Final Countdown!!
Owned 2 Volvo V70 XCs and they were outstanding. Those famous Volvo seats set the standard for interior comfort and layout and controls were perfect. Best of all, when set to “W” mode the V70 XC would climb hills, steep driveway…hell…if motivated it would climb trees.
Fairly unsung, that 5 cylinder turbo motor was easy to work on…lots of space to maneuver tools. Volvo parts were pricey, but FCP Euro and a few others have reasonable selection at great prices.
No question on which way to go.
What the hell, I’ll roll the bones on the XC70. At that price it’s not a huge loss if it turns out it needs a lot more than a solenoid. I also like the color and that interior looks comfy in its stern Scandinavian way.
The XC70 is worth investing in. Swede Steed today!