The Car Guy of Benchfield
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Reader's Rides
1972 Volvo 144
photo by JK Goble
Owned by Henry and Martha Wingate from 1972 to 1992
This car and I had a long history together... my mother took me to my first day of kindegarten in this car, and my father taught me to drive in this same car ten years later. The thing I remember most clearly about this car is that I absoulutely hated it. Up until 1988, it was a horrid shade of split pea soup-green, and all of my friends made fun of it. It had no power steering, power brakes, or power anything for that matter. It was fairly noisy for a four cylinder with a kind of puttering exhaust note. It had it's share of mechanical quirks, such as a tendancy to burn all idiot lights at once, a problem that could be remedied by whacking the dash a few good times. The Volvo almost outright refused to run in cold weather unless the manual choke was pulled all the way out, and even then it was cranky. The little green-then-black car held up for twenty years, and was still going strong when it was sold nine years ago. Strangely enough, I find myself missing that car now that I'm older. It may have been ugly and quirky, but it had character -- something that today's import sedans are sadly lacking.