Morley finally admits there are a couple of decent ABBA tunes and a few decent Volvos, like this 142S that now resides at the MBC
Oh, what have I done? Why am I even asking that? I’ve done precisely what I do every time a seductive piece of old tin wanders into my cross-hairs. Here’s what’s happened.
A few years ago, I was skilful enough to write off The Speaker’s car while coming home from a mate’s wedding. Actually, to be more precise, I was driving the car down Glebe Point Road in Sydney, the day after the wedding when a cement truck parked on top of us. The addition of 20 tonnes of Western Star twin-steer and a further few tonnes of wet concrete, according to the insurance company, suddenly meant her VW hatchback was now worth less than the sum of its individual components. So they wrote us a cheque and she started driving the MBC parts chaser to the supermarket. Not ideal. Fast food, but not ideal.
Obviously, she needed a new car and it had to be a compact hatchback. Just as I have owned utes for the past 30-plus years, likewise The Speaker has been bombing around in a string of hatchbacks which suit her fine and actually carry more than a lot of my cars. But, armed with that lovely insurance cheque, which one to buy?
The MBC welcomes you Mr 142S
Just for a change, we tackled the question logically; she drew up a list of the cars that fit our budget and that she was prepared to drive (don’t forget, thanks to what I do for a living, she’s been exposed to just about everything on the market, so this was no blindfold-and-dart exercise). Meantime, I drew up a list of budget-friendly cars that I, as the mug who would have to service the bugger, was prepared to entertain.
Then we merged the two lists and played the Venn diagram game and short-listed the cars we could both put up with. And it was a pretty short short-list. As in one. And that car? The Volvo C30. Her stipulation was that it had to be silver or grey, mine was that it had to be a non-turbo, a conventional auto and it had to have stability control. So we started searching.
Not too long later, we found an online ad for a 2010 model (after the update where the C30 got ESC) with super-low kays and a price that seemed right. We traipsed over to the rather posh suburb where it and its owner lived, took it for a test drive and did the deal in the driveway. And right there was where my concern for it stopped. Until I had to service it the first time, anyway. So I forgot about it and just let her go for it.
| Read next: Volvo C30 Polestar PCP review
Morley reckons the C30 is a surprise and delight
Eventually, though, we needed to do an interstate trip and the C30 was nominated for the role. Probably because it was first in the driveway, had fuel in it and the rego hadn’t run out (life’s not too complicated at 13 Struggle Street). So, forth we sallied with me at the helm. And whaddayaknow? This dumpy little Swede was actually great to drive. While it’s no race car, the suspension is terrific, the interior is lovely with the best front seats and best-quality leather of any car in the fleet and that five-cylinder engine has enough displacement (2.4 litres) to be convincing and sounds – when you give it the berries – like a WRC car blasting through a Swedish forest.
Having always kind of secretly admired many Volvos of the past (850 T5, 740 Turbo, 122 Amazon among others) I was now ready to come out as a Volvo fancier. A bit like when you reach a certain age and figure you can finally admit that there’s the odd ABBA song you don’t mind.
Ejector seat, you’re joking
Anyway, fast forward a few years to about 18 months ago, and a mate of mine who occupies a factory across the car park from the MBC is attempting to sneak a tasty looking 142 two-door under his roller door. Naturally, I was over there in seconds (Need a push, mate?) and all over this golden oldie like a cop on a donut.
Turns out, my pal had spotted the Ovlov at a shopping centre years earlier, had asked the elderly owner if it was for sale (which it wasn’t then) and handed the old boy a business card. Two years later, the bloke’s wife phones the number on the card to let Matey know that the owner had passed and would he still like to buy the Volvo, as the rest of the family was fighting over it? You can guess the rest. Including the bit where I spoke those fateful words: “If you ever want to sell this thing…”
Which, of course, is why I’m now the proud owner of a 1969 Volvo 142S.
Turns out the car was delivered new in Melbourne to a company director and then moved on about 18 months later to the bloke who would then own it for the next five decades. He obviously looked after it, too, and apart from a blow-over in the original colour, I can’t see any modifications or changes at all.
It’s also the earlier version of the 142 so it still has the pressed aluminium grille, strip speedo and the long gear-stick that winds its way under the dashboard to find the gearbox. Later cars had a remote shifter, a plastic grille and round-dial instruments. And being an S, it loses two doors and gains a second carburettor.
There are two bodywork zits the size of two-bob pieces that I’ll get fixed pronto, and the cheap seat covers tell me that the jazzy orange velour trim might have lost the battle with the Aussie sun at some point. The rear trim panels are likewise sunburnt, so that’ll get sorted, too. But fundamentally, this is a three-owner, dead original 69 142 two-door. As far as I know, these things aren’t exactly falling out of the trees.
The big thing right now is to get the old dear running. The widow seller reckoned it was running perfectly when her husband last parked it (before becoming too ill to drive it) but had sat idle since then. My mate never got around to trying to start it (which is why he moved it on) so it looks like that will fall to me. I’ve turned the engine by hand and it feels good (no grindy feeling through the spanner) so I’m crossing my fingers that it’ll be change the plugs, set the points, flush the fuel and kick her in the guts. We’ll see.
Stay tuned.
POSSUM POKING
Seems like I might have poked a bear or two, stirred a few possums and rattled the odd cage with my recent observations that the current standard of road safety messaging in this country is about as effective as a chocolate teapot. I know, it’s not the first time I’ve tagged the limiter upon watching my tax money being spent on ridiculous scare campaigns that not only send the wrong message but do absolutely diddly-squat in terms of keeping us safe on the roads. But the feedback I’ve received from you lot suggests that I’m not the only one who can see through this diversionary, apologist waste of money. (Oh, and these adverts aren’t government-funded. There’s no such thing as government-funded; it’s taxpayer-funded. Our elected leaders would do well to remember that.)
But I reckon the rot goes a whole lot deeper than just the dipsy TV adverts showing galoots getting distracted or simply not paying attention to anything, and then the catch-line telling us that it’s speed and alcohol that are killing us on the blood-soaked highway of death. Spare me.
How much deeper? Well, I reckon as deep as even the system by which we compare the relative active and passive safety of different makes and models. Let me preface this by saying I’ve got no problem with a body like ANCAP hurling one of each make and model into a wall and dissecting the rubble to give me an idea of which limbs I’ll have torn off should I likewise park the same car into the same solid barrier at the same considerable velocity. This stuff is fair enough and is what is called your actual science, and should be celebrated.
What is not so scientific is the extrapolation that takes place in terms of what safety equipment is fitted to particular makes and models. I’m talking stuff like lane-keeping assistance and even apparently self-explanatory stuff like seatbelt warning lights and chimes.
The problem as I see it is that there’s no such thing as a generic lane-keeping assistance program. Each car maker has their own ideas on how forceful the assistance to the tiller needs to be (yep, if you haven’t driven a really modern car, the electric power-steering now, in many cases, allows the car to literally grab the tiller if it thinks you’re wandering off line). And some car makers simply haven’t got a clue about how insistent this system should be or how it should be otherwise calibrated.
The worst ones are truly adamant that you’re driving so badly, the car has to save the day by adding some steering input to keep you centred in your lane. And often, that input is too much. Oh sure, if you yourself insist, you can, with muscle power, overcome the persistent little man in the steering column trying to help, but only after he has started to steer you back towards the truck you’re overtaking because you’ve given the B-Double a wide berth as you cross a (relatively) narrow freeway overpass. This does not sound like a safer car to me.
Or what about when you allow the left wheels to ride over the outside white line on a country road? That’s when the lane-keeping assistance dude will step in again, firmly suggesting you stick within the white lines. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that you deliberately let the car stray wide to avoid mounting 200kg of decomposing kangaroo.
The worst one I’ve encountered was in a South Korean car which was not only quite forceful in its inputs but also managed to miss, oh, every second white line it believed I shouldn’t have been crossing. Oh, and it ‘looks’ for the white lines via its onboard camera system, which is fine until the usual country bug-ass has covered the lens.
Anyway, on a quiet section of back road one fine afternoon, I conducted my own experiment. I figured I’d let the car do what it thought best and see where it landed me. Up to a point; I don’t have a death wish, so I was two-hands-on-the-wheel ready to shut down the assistance if it got too lairy. Didn’t have to wait long.
Entering a fairly gentle left-hander (with literally kilometres of clear vision ahead) the car’s cameras completely lost the plot and missed the fact that I’d crossed the centre line. So me and the car drifted across to the wrong side of the road, at which point the car’s cameras caught the outside white line of the right-hand lane and, apparently, presumed that to be the centre line. So it then, presuming I was asleep at the helm, started steering input and held me there; completely and totally on the wrong side of the road.
Had the lane-keeping system ignored me altogether, sleepy me would have continued to drift across the entire road and spear off into the mulga. That would have been my problem. As it was, the car held me in the centre of the wrong lane, just waiting for something to come the other way and into a head-on prang. Making it somebody else’s problem, too.
Please, can anybody tell me how this stuff makes cars safer? I guess it’s a way of sharing the pain.
I was talking to editor Guido about this and he made a very good point: What on earth makes anybody think that a 21-year-old computer algorithm writer, sitting in a windowless bunker in South Korea knows better than I do about driving in Australia? And, dammit, he’s bang on the money.
The second question is why have car-makers gone down this route? Well, it’s because the safety ratings they gain through official government testing are based not just on their actual crash performance, but also on the amount of stuff like lane-keeping assistance that is fitted to the cars. Fit a safety feature, tick a box, earn a point. It’s that simple. And even the dimmest consumer knows that a safe car is better than an unsafe one. Hmmm.
But here’s the classic example of where that stuff doesn’t add up. See, car-makers can earn an extra Brownie point by including – or, more crucially, lose a point if they don’t – a little warning light to indicate that the car is moving but one of the occupants hasn’t fastened their seatbelt. The logic is simple enough: If a car can warn you that you’re unrestrained, it must be safer, right? Not so fast.
This logic is all fine until somebody like you or I buy the car, at which point the car without the seatbelt warning is absolutely, 100 per cent as safe as the car with the light and buzzer. Why? Because I – and I don’t know about you, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt – have not, in four decades of driving ever once forgotten to fasten my seatbelt. At which point, I’ll never need the seatbelt warning light, so it might as well not be fitted. Won’t make a single bit of difference to that car’s safety with me driving it. A warning light to tell me that a rug-rat in the back seat has unclipped? Fine, but a driver’s-seat warning? Won’t make you, me or the bloke washing windscreens at the intersection one teensy bit safer.
And maybe that’s the point: Maybe we need to start throwing some of this responsibility back on drivers. Make them actually learn how a car works (in basic terms at least) and then how to make the best, safest use of the controls they’re presented with. Make them understand that sometimes it’s better to leave the road altogether than cause a head-on. That sometimes it’s better to have two wheels in the emergency lane than to auger into a dead roo or truck tyre in the middle of the lane. It can’t hurt to try, because our attempts to teach modern, smart cars the same lessons have clearly failed.
From Unique Cars #477, April 2023