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Junkyard Gem: 1982 Volvo 244 DL

Because it was sold in the United States for so many years — 19 model years, to be exact — and won the hearts of so many American drivers with its reliability and safety, sufficient examples of the Volvo 200 Series remain in service that they continue to show up in self-service car graveyards nearly 30 years after the last ones left the showroom. We saw a low-mile Richelieu Red 1983 Volvo 244 DL in a Denver-area yard last year, and now I've found a near-identical 1982 244 DL in another yard located between Denver and Cheyenne. Volvo went through several variations in the naming scheme for these cars between 1975 and 1993; during the first half of the 1980s, the 240 was badged using just the trim level. That makes this car a 1982 Volvo DL, the cheapest trim level available at the time. By now, though, everyone who knows old Volvos uses the three-number system of the 1970s, with the second digit indicating the number of engine cylinders and the third digit representing the number of doors. I'll be using the 244 designation here. This car came from the factory with a fuel-injected 2.1-liter SOHC straight-four rated at 112 horsepower. This car has the base four-on-the-floor manual transmission with an overdrive selected via the switch on the shift knob. If you wanted an automatic transmission, you had to pay an extra $325 (just over a thousand bucks in 2022 money). Later in the decade, a five-speed manual became available on the 240. Most 240s rack up better than 200,000 miles during their careers (and I've seen quite a few that made it past 300,000), but this car didn't reach that figure. This car still has its original AM/FM/cassette radio, which would have cost serious money in 1982. The MSRP on this car was $10,260, or about $31,800 in 2022 dollars. The two-door version went for $9,785 ($30,330 now). You could get a new 1982 Buick LeSabre Limited sedan for $9,331, and it was much roomier and more powerful than the VolvoÂ… but not as good in a crash. There's very little rust on this car, and the only serious body damage is this dented passenger-side door. The rodent nesting detritus under the hood and the lack of wear on the seat fabric suggests that it got parked for good a decade or three back. Perhaps it would have been rescued and revived in the rustier parts of the continent, but there's a glut of restorable 244s and a shortage of Volvo enthusiasts in the Denver area. This content is hosted by a third party.

Tina Fey sits down with Seinfeld for new CiCGC

Recently Jerry Seinfeld went out for a videotaped cup of coffee with Jay Leno in a vintage Gmund Porsche. Switching coasts and cars, this time New York's own son returns to his city for a jaunt in a 1967 Volvo 1800S with fellow New Yorker Tina Fey for the latest episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
The trip takes them uptown to Cuban coffee shop Floridita in Harlem, then back downtown to a pastry shop. On the way, Jerry calls out a photo shoot for using a fake Porsche, and Fey admits she doesn't have a driver's license. Driving cars, she says, "is like Twitter to me." Which she also doesn't do - she lasted seven tweets in 2009.
You can check out the episode below as they go in search of coffee, the rare guanabana/soursop juice, Jerry's even more elusive product placement and the last Cronut in NYC.

Volvo already planning road-going V8 Supercar?

After decades of cat-and-mouse battle waged between Holden and Ford, Australia's V8 Supercars series has expanded considerably. Mercedes and Nissan both joined the grid last season, and Volvo has followed suit this year. So when 2014 championship kicked off earlier this month in Adelaide, everyone was watching to see who would come out on top.
The answer is Holden, which took first place in all three of the weekend's races. In fact the General Motors division locked out the podium in the first and third races and took first and third places in the second race, letting just one other manufacturer onto the podium the entire weekend - and that was Volvo. The Polestar S60 scored second place on its first race weekend, beating all the Nissan Altimas, the Mercedes E63 AMGs, the Ford Falcons and most of the Holden Commodores.
Now that's hardly winning the championship, but it's a very solid debut. And that point was not lost on the people back at headquarters in Sweden, who are already thinking about making a roadgoing version of the race-spec V8 Supercar.