Volvos on speed.

From Sam Smith's piece up on Hagerty Media:

" 'The Volvo 850 estate,' he said, was '...the largest car in the series.' That’s Rickard Rydell, a Swede, a Volvo factory touring-car driver from 1994 to 1998. The line is the kind of dry, accurate statement often seen in carmaker press releases. 
That release was issued nine years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the Volvo 850 wagon in the British Touring Car Championship.
A racing wagon!
A Volvo!
How unlikely and marvelous!
Witness, once more, the unlikely marvelous!

"Forgive the dramatics. Volvos can evoke strong emotion, flying Volvos more so.
"At the risk of stating the obvious, we are each built of our history. When I was in high school, in the late 1990s, I had two friends with Volvo 740s. Then as now, those cars were not particularly desirable, merely old and cheap.
"Like the BMW E23 7-series or the Volkswagen Phaeton, the 740 seems destined to live in the shadow of its smaller siblings. The E23 is perpetually overshadowed by the contemporary 3-series, the E30; Phaetons are generally ignored in favor of the VW Golf. When it comes to Volvos, most people prefer the smaller and less cushy 240 models.

"This makes sense. The 240 was built from 1974 to 1993, yet its quirk seems timeless. The model offered the looks and performance of an armored train. It drove like a Detroit muscle car, if a Detroit muscle car were both wholly devoid of muscle and designed by a people genetically hardened over thousands of years of nine-month winters. 

"The 700-series Volvos, 1982 to 1992, handled better and could be had with more power, but they were very much of their period, styled like angle iron through a wood chipper.
Wait, that’s cruel.
Maybe . . .an Aston Lagonda through a wood chipper.

"...(A mechanic friend once jokingly called the 850 “an Audi 5000 that works.”

You are aware that, here at AL, we do have a thing for Volvos.