Old Volvos keep on keeping on

And at last Volvo reclaims the ugly-duckling child it abandoned to get with the cool crowd

Volvo announced it was fed up with the boxy-but-safe jokes not so long ago. Desperate to join the German glamour clique, it virtually disowned a car that many put among the greats – its 240 line of the 1970s and 1980s.

Problem was, old Volvo 240s never die. By the early 2000s, the company was making it clear they were taking longer to fade away than it wanted. A cursory look at our roads will confirm its hardiness, with no shortage of examples still hanging around.

But even Volvo's revisionists have to admit, the 240 has made a place in history like few other models. Have you noticed how popular it is as a movie prop? Normally for middle-class mensch types – the couple monstered by nanny Rebecca de Mornay in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Toni Collette's frantic mother in The Sixth Sense, Michael Douglas’s benign businessman in Fatal Attraction, those other benign people in Mystic Pizza (wasn’t everyone benign in Mystic Pizza?), crusty David Jason in A Touch of Frost. And, um, the dad from Hey Dad too.

Even the boxy-but-safe punchline came from Hollywood, coined by Dudley Moore’s disaffected advertising exec pitching a truth-in-advertising strategy.

To deride the 240 is to miss its significance. It was an affordable good car, embodying many of the virtues of Benzes and BMWs of the time. It was quiet, well equipped, pleasant to drive and yes, supremely safe. The suspension was deftly tuned to balance ride and handling, and it had an unfeasibly tiny turning circle for its size. It was built like a bank vault. The doors weren’t engineered to close with a reassuring clunk. The made a reassuring clunk because they were built to resist T-boning.

By the standards of the industry of its time, it was wonderfully over-engineered end-to-end for the price. That’s why it’s always had a big fan club, whose word on engines has long been four pots good, six pots bad. The 2.7-litre V6, jointly developed with Renault and Peugeot, was a dud from the outset. But if you look after your four (initially 2.1 litres, later 2.3), you’ll get half a million kays out of it without a recon.

It seems that Volvo has established itself sufficiently as a maker of good looking, non-boxy cars that it’s ready to reclaim the model from which, a decade ago, it so sought to distance itself. For exactly the thing every thinking driver has known about it for nigh on 40 years, too.

On Sept 22, Volvo Cars North America announced a 240 that has crossed the million-mile (1.6m kilometre) line. Baltimore owner Selden Cooper (pictured) hit the mark in his 1987 240 sedan, on the day of its 200th oil change. “I never contemplated that I’d reach one million miles,” said Mr Cooper in Volvo’s statement. “I previously had a 1975 Volvo 164-E. When I traded it in, it had nearly 250,000 miles on it, which I thought was outstanding. Needless to say, after that experience, I was not going to get anything other than a Volvo.”

Many of the miles were clocked up on long commutes between home and New Jersey, DC and Philadelphia. And on even longer family holiday trips, for example north to Nova Scotia, south to the Florida Keys and dozens of runs to North Carolina.

Volvo, of course, took the opportunity to remind owners that enthusiastic servicing is the key to getting a million miles out of a car, patting Mr Cooper on the back for going by the book all the way.

Mr Cooper, 66, said for him and the car, it’s business as usual. “It does everything I want, and it does it very reliably. It’s absolutely my pleasure to drive it. Over the past two decades, [dealership Lehman Motors Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where he bought the car] has become like family. Even after moving to Baltimore, I continued to drive 190 miles [there] for service. I couldn’t imagine bringing it anywhere else.”

Among those helping Volvo celebrate Mr Cooper’s milestone was Irv Gordon, 71, a retired science teacher from Long Island who’s chalked up nearly 3m miles (4.8m km) in the P1800 he bought new in 1966. Mr Gordon holds the Guinness World Record for most miles driven by a single owner in a vehicle, with 2.97m miles on – and well off – the clock.

Us 240 loyalists, we wait with bated breath for the first million-mile V60.

Old Volvos keep on keeping on

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