1 million kilometers with the Volvo 960
08.12.2024
First love - Hauke reports on how he reached a memorable anniversary with his Volvo
My passion for Volvo was passed on to me early on, and I was lucky enough that many of my school friends' parents drove 740 and 940 station wagons. So you could say that I got to know these vehicles as standard.
Shortly before I turned 18, I went looking for my first car. At the local Volvo dealership in Hameln, my hometown, there was a white 740 sedan!
I was in love: white on the outside, blue on the inside... a dream! Full of euphoria about the find, and with a guarantee from the dealer, I proudly told my mother about it... the insurance percentage... You know... a clear NO from my mother's mouth unfortunately quickly brought me back down to earth. Such a big car, so much power and anyway... so we drove Beetles back then, you can try a Golf... if you want the percentage.
Well, it was a red Golf 2 from a pensioner, who ate the hair from my head on the long freeway stages with its four gears.
I had it for almost three quarters of a year, as a beginner's car it was certainly good... but I was missing something in life, that was clear to me. By “coincidence” I came across a 1996 960 station wagon in August 2004, the car of my dreams. My mother understood that the boy should drive something safe on the highway, so I was allowed to buy a car that I liked with MY money... wonderful.
The words of the salesman, a dealer from Emsland, stuck in my mind: “Please promise me that you'll drive carefully. It has over 200 horsepower and I'm not entirely comfortable selling a car like this to a 19-year-old.”
I would say that I kept my promise.
This car, which was only 8 years old at the time, had covered almost 130,000 km. Thanks to my employer, from then on he got to know half of Europe and large parts of the Federal Republic of Germany with me, covering between 40 and 80 thousand kilometers each year.
I familiarized myself with the technology, made contacts and got to know my own car better and better. The comments from the early years, “It's nice that your parents always lend you their car,” eventually stopped, as did questions from various Volvo dealers about whether the repair was still worthwhile.
The first big step was crossing the 500,000 km mark. I didn't know of any other car with such a high mileage, and neither did anyone else around me.
The 960, also affectionately named DIVA because of its attitudes in the early years, was an integral part of my life. We were everywhere together - moving house, picking up cars on trailers, visiting the Arctic Circle at -36 degrees, endless full-throttle stages on the A2 at night... the Volvo did it all and rarely broke down despite its age or mileage. With a single exception: at 700,000 km, the cylinder head gasket had to be replaced along with the revision of the multilink rear axle. Result: engine as new after inspection, rear axle differential too.
So it can continue blithely.
From 800,000 km, the goal was clearly focused, no matter what happens, we will reach the 1,000,000 km together!
In all these years, the car - my faithful companion - has experienced a lot, the 1,000,000 km mark will fall in the next few days and my husband and I will celebrate it in style!!!
My first new car :P
To this day, by the way, the six-cylinder car covers its annual mileage, occasionally drives at full throttle and still manages a “real” 220 km/h with a very moderate oil consumption of approx. 0.25 liters per 2500 km on average.
