On Saturday 18 June, I attended the VCOA (Volvo Club of America) National Meet in Lindsborg, Kansas, to show off 64SAINT, my Volvo 1800S.

Sounds simple enough, except how was I going to get there? It was 440 miles “door-to-door”. Was 64SAINT up to it? A week or so before the trip, I had Concours Cars service the car and also get rid of the crappy boy-racer exhaust (why, oh why did the guy who restored it damage the look with this monstrosity?) and replace it with a dual tail pipe more-in-line-with-how-it-should-be exhaust. They gave me the thumbs up: the car was ready.

As it turned out the trip there on the Friday was just fine. It’s practically a straight line east on highway 24, then I70. I had lots of admiring glances and waves along the way (including one truck driver who nearly drove off the road because he was looking at me in his rear-view mirror). It took me 6 hours 36 minutes to get to the Marriott Courtyard in Salina (just up the road from Lindsborg), with two stops for gas; fine sunny weather all the way. Overall, the mileage was 28.4 miles per gallon, and I was doing 70mph on the interstate. Mind you, I didn’t turn on the air conditioning until the final couple of hours.

Once registered at the hotel, I took the car to wash it: lots of bugs had sacrificed themselves on the windshield. The weather was oppressively hot and humid and by the time I’d leathered off the car I was drenched with sweat. Back to the hotel, quick (cold) shower, and then out to dinner.

The next morning the car was all dirty again: it had rained in the night. This time I quickly leathered it down with my wet chamois. It turns out though that it was worse than rain: it had hailed elsewhere. One of the owners had even had his car damaged slightly. Scary stuff. Anyway, I drove down to Lindsborg (nicknamed Little Sweden USA for various reasons), and parked the car in my allotted spot, thankfully in tree shade. Another quick polish, and it was time for the show.

For the next four or five hours I spoke with a whole bunch of people: other owners and spectators. Owners just wanted to know how good the air-con was; the general consensus was not very well. There was talk about this coolant versus that coolant, arcane knowledge that I am not privy to. Spectators wanted to know everything, how much the restoration had cost, how long I’d had it, did I drive it all the time. There was one old gent in his 80s, accompanied by his daughter, who seemed transfixed with my engine (“is it a V8?”) and was nattering on about a Chevy he used to own.

Then came the awards ceremony. It turned out that 64SAINT had not only won First prize for the P1800/1800S group but it had also won joint Best in Show. I was bowled over, with a silly smile on my face.

And all too suddenly it was time to go home again. I had a flight to Russia in the morning the next day, so I couldn’t stay. There was another six and a half hour journey in front of me.

This time though I was not so lucky. I left at 3:30pm in brilliant hot sunshine, air-con blasting as much as it could, but three hours later the clouds had appeared, then thickened, then cracked with lightning. It poured down. My poor car: it hadn’t been in the rain for at least 6 years, since the restoration. No more cruising at 70mph, we slowed right down the spray was horrendous. At the first stop for gas (it had stopped raining, just), I’d covered 245 miles at 25.3 mpg. Soon after starting off again, the rain came back, and, a few miles later, my passenger side wiper blade broke off and clattered over the roof, only to be lost in the night. At that point, luckily, I was able to stop using the wipers (otherwise I’d have scored a scratch in the windshield) and rely on the air rushing over the windshield to keep it clear.

Next stop for gas was in Limon, 174 miles further on. 28 mpg this time, mainly because I wasn’t using the air-con any more. It was late. After another 76 miles I was back home again, at roughly 11pm. I’d covered 460 miles this time.

All in all, I had a ball, despite the rather rushed nature of it all (I’d have preferred coming back the Sunday, for sure). 64SAINT was the perfect car: no worries apart from the wiper blade. Next year? We’ll see. I certainly don’t want to drive to either the East or West Coast; in some sense, Kansas was the ideal place.

I’ve put up a bunch of photos of the event on Flickr.

I’ve been a bit remiss in posting these photos, but a friend reminded me yesterday that I’d promised to show off my “new” car.

Way back when I lived in England I owned a red 1969 Volvo 1800S, a rare B20B version (that is, a 2000cc, non-fuel-injected engine). Only 1693 were ever produced since Volvo brought out the 1800E pretty quickly with a fuel injection system added (E stands for einspritzung, the German for fuel injection, since the system used in the Volvos was produced by Bosch).

That car was nice-looking enough that it was the October picture in the Classic Cars calendar of 1991. It was a fun day I had with the photographer, driving all over Rochester in Kent, trying to get the perfect picture. The one published was taken outside Eastgate House in Rochester High Street, although we drove up to the castle and down to the Medway as well. I’ll post a photo of that calendar page later.

Once I moved to the States in 1993, I had to sell it. I couldn’t afford the shipping to Colorado and the car needed to be driven and looked after otherwise it would just have rotted away. So in 1995 I finally found a buyer and sold it and silently regretted it.

Anyway, I’ve been looking for a reasonably-priced red 1800S for the past year or so, one that has already been restored. I finally found one in California in July, a 1964 version with a B18B engine, and bought it one of the weeks I was in the DevExpress offices in Glendale. I had it shipped to Colorado (no way was I going to drive an unknown car 1000 miles home, especially one that had only been driven some 200 miles in the last 5 years). This was it on the Friday it was delivered:

The very next Monday I took it to Concours Cars in Old Colorado City for them to thoroughly check it over and retune it for the altitude. And it was a good job I did too: the heater core had a leak and the car was losing coolant like there was no tomorrow. (Boy was I glad I hadn’t decided to drive it back from California.)

In the end, they kept it for nearly a month fixing various systems and bits and pieces and replacing oil, fluids, belts, etc. I’m going to guess that whoever restored it ran out of money after doing the bodywork and rebuilding the engine since there were quite a few minor problems, apart from the heater core leak. Egregious examples: the headlights weren’t connected to the switch; the cable for the flap for the defroster was missing (besides which the flap itself was broken); there was no windscreen washer system at all apart from the nozzles. They also decided that the carburetor needed to be replaced (whatever fuel additive the previous owner had used had rotted the jets while it was in storage). There’s still a few little things to fix (which they’ll be doing over the winter), but at least they made sure the car was drivable and legal to drive.

Here’s the front, showing the cowhorn bumpers and the aluminum “egg-crate” grill (and the crappy “VOLVO” plate that is screwed on with some security screws that will have to be drilled out):

And here’s the rear, showing that I still need to register it in Colorado. The plate reads “64SAINT”, because it’s a 1964 car and The Saint, played by Roger Moore in the TV series, used to drive one in the 60s. I might go for the same plate here, if it’s available.

(You can see my set of pictures of the car on Flickr. I’ll keep updating it as I take more photos.)

Let me just say that the car is just awesome. It’s great fun to drive around town, even without power steering (the steering wheel is huge though and my upper body strength is improving!). Now I know how the automatic choke works I can even start it from cold without cranking and cranking the starter. It gets a bit noisy on the interstate (besides which I don’t really go above 60mph in it until the rebuilt engine has had a chance to settle down) and turning the air conditioning on just makes it noisier still. And the wheels are too gaudy for my taste (going to go for some Panasports later). But... overall, it’s just brilliant.

I collect brochures, data sheets, and other paraphernalia for the Volvo 1800S, a car I used to own in England and that one day I'm going to own again. Occasionally, I'll post here some images of my collection (see here for an older post showing off a 4 page brochure).

This arrived today, a one-page data sheet. The date on the back indicates that it was published October 1968. It's got a picture of a white Volvo 1800S on the front and the technical info on the back. A little yellowed at the top, but in nice nick nevertheless. (Click on the image for a full PDF.)

Unfortunately the original preparation and printing weren't very good: the picture is obviously cut from another photo (taken in bright sunlight) to put it against the black background, and at magnification it shows. Some of the data on the back had been changed (the fonts are slightly different) before printing.

With these data sheets, it's fun to read the technical data to see what they thought was important to mention in those days. Engine displacement in cu.in. (109 cu.in. is the same as 1800 cc, hence the name of the car). There's no mention of fuel economy or of top speed or of acceleration (the latter two these days are de rigueur pieces of info for sports cars). And I'm so glad that the three-point safety belts are standard equipment.