Falling in love the first time…
When I was young I liked watching Charlies Angels on DVD. Ok, I was really too young for the cute gals, but surely I was thinking I would grow up and buy one of those classic white with blue striped 1976 Ford Mustang Cobra II’s that Jill Monroe (Farrah Fawcett) drove. I knew one day, I would own a classic car and at first, I thought it would be a Mustang.
As time went by, I would always keep searching for a Cobra, slowly expanding my options to just a white car with a blue stripe. So from Mustang, to Camaro I went. My mother always loved Volvo, as their safety factor is a huge deal, so she encouraged me to look for one. She also said, she wanted me to be safe driving when I turned 16 years old. Looking for my first car is a big deal.
So after looking at some older Volvo cars, I decided that they just weren’t my type. However, while looking at some websites for some cheap and fun classic cars, then to reliable classic cars, I came across a photo of a Volvo P1800. I kept scrolling, not even bothering to check the description or name of the car, as I thought that by the way it looked, it would be completely out of my budget. After looking all over Craigslist for classics in general, I came across a P1800E that I thought would be crazy expensive, for a price I could almost afford, and about four or five hours away. It had a large amount of miles, was not in the best of shape and was already far away. After about a week, I checked back and it was auctioned off on eBay for half the listed price. I was super disappointed because my mom said we were going to check about it, after I explained to her how P1800’s are pretty rare and known for their reliability. By this time, I was crazy about this car. (Fun fact, the car with the most miles in the world, 3.2 million, was a Volvo P1800 from 1966, owned by Irv Gordon). I drove my mom crazy too, with all the tid-bits of car facts. Mom knew that I would likely grow older and wish I had kept my first car because she’s in her 50’s and apparently that’s what guys do, as she has told me. She owned a classic car once too. So raising me up the way she has done by herself, she encouraged me to pick something I would want to keep and enjoy driving at 16 and at 56. I know we aren’t the typical twosome that you’d think would be crazy about old cars and I like that about my mom. The next time we would see a P1800, she said we’d get right on it.
A couple of months later, I check on Craigslist again, and there was amazingly, another P1800. In just about every state in the nation, there are “Wanted P1800,” ads but seldom one for sale. It was about an hour away, in a neighboring town, and it was a “fixer-upper” so to speak. It had been listed for three days. I told my mom and she immediately contacted the owner by phone five minutes later. The owner said they had two other full price offers they were considering and that one of the guys looking at it was coming tomorrow and one had just looked at it the night before. My mom told our story of how when I was a little kid, we were in a Volvo, and at a highway intersection we were T-boned by a semi truck. Amazingly, my door only had a scratch, and my mother survived none the less after many months of working to walk again.
After sharing all of this, Mom offered him slightly more than his asking and said we would pick it up that very day and yet, she didn’t know how! He accepted, so Mom called a friend Lee, who was closer to the location, and he said he would go right away but he needed something to haul it with. So he called his good buddy Alan at a garage in the town Lee lives in, and he loaned the trailer. She also asked him if he just happened to have a load of cash on him, because the banks were closed for the evening. He did! Mom gave him that plus more for travel expenses, etc. But having his help was invaluable. He was an old car buff too and has some himself, so I think he really understood. Half way there, the seller tells us that one of the other buyers said they would pay more, and pick it up the next day. We already had a deal, and after a short bit of talking, the seller decided to stick with us. This would be my first car, and an interesting one too. We took it to a shop, and they fixed up most of the engineering work, and got it running good. After searching for a body-shop to do the rest, we found one closer to us.
The body had some rust hidden underneath it, and wasn’t in entirely good condition. The day we delivered it, it rained all the way over, and the car wasn’t covered. Oddly enough, when we got there, we found that there wasn’t a “weep hole” in the fuel filling area. (The fueling cap for a P1800 is on the top of the car in the trunk area.) This caused water to get into the fuel tank which causes all sorts of problems in the fuel line, rusts the fuel tank and gets water in the fuel injectors. We tried and tried to get it started, while the body shop owner, Jim, sprayed starter fluid and some unfortunately got in the air filters. This caused the air filters to catch on fire, which made Jim take off his sweatshirt and snuff out the fire, burning his sweatshirt to bits. Of course, we were not going to try to start it again after that, and just pushed it off the trailer we brought it on. When Jim pulled the gas tank out, it was super rusted, dirty and old, so we decided to order a new one. It also needed some parts for the underbody, such as rocker panels, floor pans, etc. Luckily, every single part for the car is available. Being a Swedish car, most of the parts come from Sweden. You could literally buy everything to make the car from scratch minus a body, wheels, etc.
Finding our auto restoration expert took my mom about a week of calling shops and asking questions within a two hundred mile radius. That’s how we settled on Jim. He was the only one who didn’t seem afraid of it and didn’t shoot out numbers in the first minute that could buy a small cabin. My mom liked him immediately. Jim said it is the first P1800 in his life long career of auto restoration. He didn’t know much about it, but researched it before we arrived and said it was a cool car. I found a cool logo on a sweatshirt online that has a picture of a P1800 and says “Sort of a souped-down Ferrari”, which was an old promotional ad for the P1800. I got Jim the sweatshirt to replace the one he ruined for my car, and so he would never forget the project. Jim has an interesting background, having found his calling in an autobody class after high school early on. Jim’s mom called him Mr. Fix-it even as a child. I like those kind of guys. Somewhere along the way, Jim purchased his boss Joe’s shop and did a “two-letter” name change. With 25+ years under his belt, he eventually sold that shop and taught for 5 years at the community college, sharing some of the wisdom he has learned along the way. Alas, he craved his “own little cave” and the ability to have a little fun. He decided in his retirement that he would focus on restorations. “As long as it’s fun, I’ll keep doing it.” Jim has been having lots of fun restoring my P1800 and is knee deep in it. I am waiting patiently and updating my blog in the process.
Jim said to get good insurance and mom got right on it. It’s funny to think that one of the videos I watched about P1800’s on youtube before I ever had one, was about the managing director, Angus Forsyth, of Hagerty International and the P1800 he bought when he was 18. Turns out, Hagerty became the insurance carrier for my car, which is listed in my mom’s name until I’m 18. I have a 3.9 GPA and will graduate high school this summer of my 16th year and hope to drive my first forever car. I intend to get my senior portraits in a black tux like Roger Moore in the Saint with my car at my side. My other daily driver car will likely be the Volvo XC90 which we are now searching for the right one. Mom and I hope to join some of the car clubs and shows and it will be something we share together as the years go by.
The Daily Driver
Well, now that my fun car is almost finished, I need to start looking for my daily driver. First thing I have to think about, is truck, SUV or sedan. I’ve already decided that I personally would prefer an SUV over a truck, so I’ve narrowed it down to SUV or sedan. With this in…
Fast… for a Volvo
Hagerty just made an article a week or so ago that the new Polestar series Volvo’s will be now limited to a speed limit of 112 mph. That may seem like a lot to the average person, but with a car that you are paying almost $160,000 US dollars for, and has over 400HP, you…
Who has it and who want’s it
You know you got a good deal when you bought a car that looked basically new and only didn’t run because the carburetors weren’t attached and some issues with the gas line, but you find rusted out cars with trashed interiors for several thousand more. It seems that P1800’s and just 1800’s in general are…
Rocking out!
The rocker panels are being finished, which are what the doors sit on. Get this, when we bought the car, the rocker panels were actually heavy duty pieces aluminum foil spray painted red! Not exactly the best self-repair job… It’s really important to get reputable people to repair stuff when you buy it, and make…
Sealing it up!
The floor pans have been all sealed up, and are ready to go! Now its the fun part! Almost all of the structural part is done, now its just body work! With a car like this the floor pans are one of the most important part, because they serve as the structural base for the…
Floor pans!
The floor pans have been welded in, which makes sure I don’t just drop to the ground and start pushing the car like Fred Flinstone. The structural integrity of the car before this was compromised to the point that it could have split in half, and because its a unibody car, there’s no chassis to…
Discovering more rust…
Jim’s making sure the job’s done right and getting rid of key areas of rust. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you buy an old car that looks amazing on the outside, then when you look closely after you buy it on the inside, it can look like crap mechanically.
Progress continues…
Currently getting more progress done on the underbody, it’s been a lesson in patience for me having an expert carefully peel back layers. The shiny red apple has become somewhat like an onion, but thankfully Jim knows what hes doing.
It’s in the works…
Jim called today and said they are knee-deep, almost 24 hours total now and rolling, the Red Baron is in surgery. He says there is a pile of parts on the floor that have already been sliced out. He is taking photos for me.
Waiting in line
We came down to the shop to see if any progress was done on the car, and he told us it would be a couple of weeks because he was working on a big project, a 1971 Dodge Charger. After that he said he would get started on my car.
A new vision with 20/20
We came down to the shop to give Jim a Christmas present, and also to see if there was any progress, in which there wasn’t because he was going on a trip for a couple weeks and didn’t want to get started until he got back. The car would get it’s new lease on life…
Good things come to those who wait
We got a call from the shop owner that the parts arrived, which mainly was things that go under the car, such as rocker panels, cross-beams and other supports, as well as a fuel tank and fuel line. Those were the most expensive boxes I’ve ever opened in my 15 years of life. Mom said,…
We were a good match
We went down to Jim’s body shop, consulted the owner of the parts company and proceeded to get all of the parts ordered. From the time this is posted it would be next Friday. Finding the parts that were from the actual maker was a huge deal. Mom had spoken to countless auto body guys.…
The Red Baron has landed
We went down to the shop, and got a list of parts to order for the car, and also talked about the history of the car, and the fact that all of the parts being available is amazing. I printed out pages and pages of body parts from a classic Volvo parts supply company and…
Body Work (pt. 2)
We went down to the shop to check up on the car, and they are getting work done. Most of the interior is taken out, and they are working on fixing the rust. They took the fuel tank out, and it was rusted to pieces. Other than that, they said it was looking better than…
Body Work
After finding a body shop, we had it put on a trailer and taken to it. When it arrived, it wouldn’t start. So the body shop owner tried some things to get it to start, including spraying starter fluid in the air filters, which caught them on fire. Luckily, everything was fine and nothing was…
It was a classic barn find…
Here’s a picture that was posted on Craigslist for my car. The guy literally rolled it out of the barn and up onto our car trailer. The first thing we did was to get the car back to a mechanics shop, to get it running. When we got it there we found out that the…
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