The car has quite a bit of an interesting history. Prior to me it was a one owner car bought new as one of the first S70s that was sold in the states (this is what I was told by the guy I bought it from who had called Volvo Corporate about the car). It’s Black Stone over Oak and was optioned with leather non-heated seats, no sunroof, upgraded speakers, and as a manual. A very interesting spec. If I am trying to put my head together at what the original owner was thinking was that he wanted the simplest vehicle to take care of, which it certainly has been. It was sold near Philly in 1997 and lived in the city for the first decade of its life. After that the car followed the original owner to Washington DC and lived in Northern VA for the next decade or so of its life. During this time, it was religiously taken to the dealer every 5,000 miles and was stamped in its service book.
Then in 2022/2023 (I forget the exact year) the original owner had died. He was taking care of the car till the very end and had service records from days before he died at the dealership. The car sat for a while with the family as they worked through his estate and was acquired by a small BMW/Volvo/Saab enthusiast dealer out of Torrington, CT named Casey in the estate sale auction and was transported to CT in the Summer of 2024. At this point the car had 120k miles on it at and the car was going to be sold on BAT/Cars and Bids, but he chucked it up on Facebook Marketplace to gauge interest and that’s when I caught it.
At the time I was looking for a second cheap daily so I could give my 2000 ES300 to my girlfriend who didn’t have a car. I wasn’t even in interested in buying a Volvo it wasn’t on my radar at all. I was actually looking for a Honda Civic SI or another E46 BMW as I had loved my 330ci I had for a short stint in 2022-2023. As soon as I caught my eyes on the Volvo, I knew I wanted it. I immediately messaged Casey, put a deposit down after another buyer backed out, and came with $9k cash for the car. Casey was super awesome and met me on a weekend halfway between me in Burlington, VT and him in CT near Saratoga Springs, NY while he was on a trip with friends. Sidenote about Casey, we wound up basically swapping boxy 90s cars between our circles. I bought my S70 from him and my dad sold his two toned green W124 slammed Mercedes (we still miss Rewind every day pic attached) from his collection to a close friend of Casey. Funny how small the world is sometimes.
I picked up the car from him late on a Sunday night, got a refresher from him on how to drive manual (my first manual car) in an Aldi’s parking lot, and drove three hours back home through the night. What an adventure that was! I got home at 2AM and had work at 8AM. That first sleep exhausted drive to work through downtown Burlington which is quite hilly was interesting to say the least haha. I maybe stalled the car 6-7 times in a 20 minute drive – oops. I immediately fell in love with driving manual and did eventually get proficient at it. I registered and inspected the car no issues besides an EVAP leak and got the VT plate GRAMPS which is so fitting for the car.
From July 2024 when I bought the car till January 2025 I meticulously went over the car and did a full Stage 0, serviced the PCV system, and a bunch of other little things. During this time as well I was living in Burlington, VT and it was street parked and it was scarped up on the front bumper on September 25th. I was actually moving October 1st to a nicer place so that I didn’t have to park it on the street anymore. The comedic timing is impeccable. The person who scraped it paid for it to be repainted which was cool. Special thanks to Scott @ The Swedish Pit in South Burlington, VT as well for always helping me out when I can’t tackle a project myself. I work 70 hours a week and live in an apartment with no where to work on the car so having a Volvo specialist nearby has been a blessing to tackle larger projects that need time and space.
Then tragedy… in February 2025 on the way to work I was turning right through an intersection. We had just had a large snowstorm, and the snowplow had piled up the snow on the corner to the point where you couldn’t see around it. There was a yellow light, so I was going probably a little faster than I needed to around the turn to make it in time. Low and behold on the other side of the blind corner the car in front of me slammed on their brakes. I immediately slammed on mine as well, but didn’t have the best stopping power and rear ended the other car at about 10 mph. The impact was just enough to bend in the hood, crack the radiator support, and shattered the headlights which totaled the care. I fought hard with Geico and gave them comparable listings, but they didn’t care and totaled it out for $3,000.
I felt really bad for my girlfriend who was in the passenger seat as she had in December 2024 totaled the aforementioned Lexus ES300 by rear ending a snow plow who slammed on their brakes and the road was too bad for her to stop in time (sort of funny that we both had our cars totaled in connection to snow plows within such a short time period but oh well). She was already a little nervous in cars after the accident and for the same thing to happen to her again and not have control of it I feel so terrible. Turns out also the lady in front of me that I hit had a Class B restriction which means she can’t see very well and isn’t allowed to drive at night. She had slammed on her brakes about 100ft before the turn in to go to a strip mall and she couldn’t see the entrance… Cops knew what happened and felt bad for me he was a car guy as well. He knew this was BS as well.
I bought the car back from Geico for $176 (lol) and I am working on repairing it and fixing it now back better than ever. Luckily in the first 6 months of ownership I really handled all the mechanical issues so the car drives perfect, and I can work on repairing the body damage and modifying the car now. I plan on still daily driving it, just more carefully. In the next 2 months I have a lot of things coming for the car and it will be put back together better than ever. I’ll keep posting photos of the car along the journey of putting it back together. Thanks for reading this giant writeup! Whew.