Over the winter (November to March, inclusive) I put 64SAINT away in winter storage at Concours Cars. Although I’d not done this before, the reason for putting it away this past winter was pretty mundane: we only have a two car garage for three cars and I was getting tired of cleaning the snow and ice off my Audi (that’s the car that’s left outside when the Volvo is parked in the garage). […]
New radiator, plus shroud
This year, as part of the annual maintenance and service, Concours Cars noticed a gentle leak from the radiator. Not really a leak per se, more like weeping from one of the seams. What to do? I could have just left it, but there’s one thing that we battle with in Colorado Springs with a normally aspirated car apart from the sheer hell of tuning it for the altitude, and that’s the heat in the summer. Let’s put it like this, driving on the Interstate (or even around town come to that) in the mid-afternoon on a lovely sunny hot summer’s day, that water temperature gauge starts to go above the 212°F mark. Turn on the A/C and we’re talking approaching the 230°F mark at the top of the gauge. And with the road works we have on I25 at the moment, it’s stop and go sometimes, and I start getting really worried about the water blowing the radiator cap. […]
Minichamps red 1969 Volvo P1800
Earlier on this year, after at least a good three years of looking, I finally managed to score a red Minichamps Volvo P1800 1:43 model. It depicts a 1969 version with the straight front bumpers and so on. I’ve been meaning to take a picture of it on 64SAINT, but for some reason didn’t get round to it until today. […]
3 million reasons to believe
Lest this blog become a blog about Irv Gordon, I must nevertheless post a link to this wonderful ad for Volvo. It features Gordon’s 1800S as it approaches its 3 million mile mark. Well, OK, Gordon was there all along too, so it’s his 3 million mile mark as well. […]
Volvo blog post on Irv Gordon
From the official Volvo US blog: a good post about Irv Gordon as he approaches the 3 million mile mark in his 1966 Volvo 1800S. Since the odometer only has 5 digits, he’s cycled through it 30 times… […]
64SAINT in ex-industrial settings
I got let off early from an all-afternoon rehearsal so, as it was a pretty, sunny, and somewhat warm day in Colorado Springs, I decided to take the Volvo 1800S out for a spin and a photo shoot. It also helped that I’d washed it yesterday (it also being a pretty, sunny, and somewhat warm day), so the gods were smiling on me. 64SAINT was eager to be out and about after some time in the garage during the recent snowfalls and freezing days, so I took it downtown for some pristine-car-against-grungy-industrial-background shots. […]
Mid restoration
Previously, I’d shown and commented on the pictures of my Volvo 1800S, 64SAINT, before the restoration was started in 2003. In this post, I’ll show the pictures I was given when I bought the car that show it in mid-restoration. There are four such photos. […]
Motor Trend article comparing the Volvo 1800E, AMC AMX, and Datsun 240Z
Back in the fall of 2012, Motor Trend published an article looking at the differences between the European, American, and Japanese ideas of what a sports car should be at the beginning of the 70s. They selected a 1971 Volvo 1800E (the last variant and the last year of the successful P1800 series coupe, the 1800ES was to continue another year), a 1969 AMC AMX, and the outstandingly successful Datsun 240Z. tl;dr: the Datsun nailed what it meant to be a sports car in the new era. […]