With snow and ski rack, as is proper for an old Colorado Volvo.
You’ll still see Volvo 240s all over American roads to this day, since they were built for nearly 20 years and tend to hold together for many hundreds of thousands of miles. But what about the 240’s direct ancestor, the 140? Those old Swedes have become very rare sights on our boulevards in recent years. Here’s a ’74 140 sedan that lives on the street near downtown Denver, to follow up the street-spotted Connecticut ’73 we admired last year.
We can tell this car is a 1974 model and thus one of the final 140s ever built (the related 164 stayed in production through the following year) because it has the big bumpers mandated by federal law for that year. Volvo did a better job making not-so-hideous 5-mph crash bumpers than, say, British Leyland.
Volvo offered three trim levels for the 1974 144, and the GL grille badge indicates that this is a high-zoot Grand Luxe model.
The Volvo 240, sold here from the 1975 through 1993 model years, was essentially the same car as the 140 from the A-pillars rearward; the most significant mechanical difference was a modern McPherson strut front suspension in the 240. You could park a 1967 144 next to a 1993 244 and have a hard time telling them apart at a distance.
This car has a bit of body rust—nothing too bad—and the ski rack would look as right in Göteborg as it does in the Mile High City. The wheels appear to be factory units from a Volvo 960; the 5×108 wheel bolt pattern on the 140 is on the oddball side (at least for rear-wheel-drive vehicles), so affordable wheel options are limited if you want something other than factory steelies and dog-dishes.
Keyword: 1974 Volvo 144 GL Is Down on the Denver Street