Annoyingly some uncouth youth rear ended my trusty A6 Avant whilst I was parked in traffic, and condemned it to death. I travel many, many miles, so I did the obvious thing, and bought a diesel 106. This was many, many cheaps to run, but also many, many uncomfortables, so it was time to go car shopping again.
I toyed with the idea of spending some money and actually buying a proper car, I like Audi A8's & 730d's a lot. It turns out I like not spending money more though, and with a little one on the way and having covered 21,000 miles in the Audi between August and April, it was back to bangernomics.
To cut a long story short, I ended up with a very leggy Volvo V70. The reasons for this are thus:
1) It was local, and I couldn't be arsed to travel anywhere
2) It looked very comfy
3) I like a risk
4) Although cosmetically horrific, mechanically it appeared sound, and had a full stamped volvo dealer history.
So, enter the 197,000 mile Volvo V70.
Phantom Black, Arena Leather, (beige it would appear) and some optionz.
The car is a 2004 53 plate V70 SE, D5 Euro 3 in Manual. Kit wise, it has:
Electric Drivers Memory Seat
Electric Mirrors
Electric Windows
Heated Seats
Dolby Pro Logic Surround Premium Audio
CD Multichanger
Auto-Dimming Mirror
Remote Courtesy Lighting
Fog Lights
Obligatory Dog Guard
Cruise Control
Climate Control
Auto Wipers
Headlight Washers
17" 'Thor' Alloys
Rear Luggage Tidy
Tow Package
It was also very cheap, thanks mostly to the fact that it was in the trade, no-one likes to buy cars with 200k on the clock, and it appeared not to have been washed since new.
The outside was bad enough, the interior was horrendous. I actually bought a wet vac. I have some 50/50's of the boot carpet somewhere I'll dig out.
So, tackling the interior, I wet vac'd all the carpets, then attacked the seats with a steam cleaners, Zymol leather cleaner, Autoglym Leather Care Balm, and a nail brush.
The seat back on the left hasn't been done.... urgh.
I replaced all the interior lights with LED's, I prefer crisper white light than yellowy normal bulbs. The interior is a fairly pleasant place to be:
It also had some sort of wack phone aerial off of the 80's, this got binned.
Then I did many machiningz to get the outside looking a bit smarter and generally less tired, the paintwork came up fairly well tbf.
Before:
After:
Bonnet 50/50
Debadge Hero:
And it still does this:
So, there we are, a leggy bus.