B490 VNK
1984 Volvo 340DL
Bought: October 1996 for Ł1,050, 37,000 miles
Sold: June 1998 for Ł200, 54,000 miles

Ahhh, my first car - nostalgia. I passed my driving test within 2 months of my 17th birthday, and I couldn't wait to get my own car, but A-levels and finances meant it had to wait a couple of years. Working long hours at a supermarket during the summer holidays meant I finally amassed the Ł1,500 (Ł1,000 for the car and Ł500 for the insurance) I needed. So I went shopping.

I don't like small cars but I needed something cheap to insure, which is how I ended up with this here Volvo. Looking back a beige Volvo 340 is a pretty awful motor, but back in 1996 you couldn't just stroll up to Yes Car Credit and pay Ł99 a month for the rest of your life for something decent, so I didn't get any stick for driving such a Grandad car. Well, alright I did get quite a lot of stick, but not to my face because most people were happy to accept a lift.

The Volvo was actually a lot of fun, because it was easy to work on, in really good condition (I bought it from the original owner), and it was rear wheel drive so when it was wet you could drive everywhere sideways like they did on The Professionals. At least it did to start with on the cheapest Eastern European tyres I could find (meaning screaming tyres when taking a corner at anything over 18mph). The car didn't even have a radio so I bought a Blaupunkt RDS number and some Pioneer speakers - took two days to fit if I remember rightly. The follies of youth, eh?

On the downside I managed to put a crease in the passenger door pretty early on and there were a couple of moments when it let me down and repairs looked unfeasible, but someone was smiling on me and the problems turned out to be a lot more simple (and cheap) than first thought. Kudos to my dad's mate Barry for helping us change the front suspension (he took payment in beer - why can't everything in life be so simple?), and Rod Hull in Rochester (well, it looked like him, and this was prior to him falling off his roof) who fixed a broken pushrod.

In a lot of ways I'd probably still be driving it now if it hadn't been for that fateful night when my then-girlfriend crashed into a pole. The car was still driveable but the front-end was in a V-shape. In the end, rather than claim on the insurance I sold the wreck to my mechanic. He then repaired it and sold it on, but by this time I had the Bluebird.

Come to think of it, that girl still owes me a car...maybe I should buy another one someday. They go for pennies on eBay now. Perhaps the lairy "big block" 360GLT to teach the Saxo VTRs a thing or two.

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