The New Family Wagon

Forgot the best bit, it's making just shy of 400bhp and about 550NM

YESM8

fastest dad in the playground

I love these.

Harsh. But probably true. Not for long I hope 😉

Saad, welcome to the sleeper wagon club. Long may we cart our kids around in style, comfort and space 😃

Lolsoz but as you say not for long...you win on JDM points though

My wife and I just had a baby in December, and I was keen to exercise my right to use some of her leave (Shared Parental Leave), so I submitted my request to my work to take a month off, which they legally have to accept, and instead of just mooching about at home in London, we thought we'd go spend a month in the sun on the beach with the bab. Settling on Puglia in Southern Italy, I floated the idea of driving down there and making a road trip of it, and she was again, sceptical at first, but I've very persuasive and the thought of lugging all the kit we'd need for the bab for a month down to Puglia on the plane was enough to convince her. We'd already made this plan before I bought the Volvo so for me, this was an absolute bonus, instead of chugging along the scenic route in a diesel, I'd get to properly enjoy the drive!


Due to the 5 month old baby, the drive down had to be multiple days, I plugged in the start and finish and the most direct route on Google Maps said 24 hours, so to limit the driving time to just 5-6 hours a day, it had to be 5 days to get there. This allowed for detours for nice roads and nice towns for food and rest stops. We didn't want to do just motorways, so the route on the way down was London - Longwy – Memmingen – Ala Avio (via Austria) – Ortona – Torre Colimena. Our plan was to drive when he napped, then give him a bit of awake time in the car seat, then stop when he got cranky. When stopped we’d find somewhere we could lay out a blanket or playmat for him to get a kick about, rather than going from car seat to pushchair or sling, which wouldn’t really give him any freedom in the day. In the afternoons we’d aim to be at our overnight destination by 17:30-18:00 to give him some decent playtime before his 19:30-20:00 bedtime.


Frustratingly, and I put no blame on the previous owner because I know the level of detail and fastidious care he applied to maintaining this car, less than a week before the trip, the A/C packed up. As he’d thrown a lot of money at Doves of Croydon Volvo main dealer to rectify this not a huge amount of time before selling the car, it was understandable that he was just as annoyed as I was about this, but with no time to get it sorted before the trip, my wife and I just had to concede that we were going to do a lot of sweating, and babies survived fine back in the day when cars had no A/C.
Other than that, the car behaved faultlessly, it was a rocketship when it needed to be, comfortable all the time, it absolutely munched miles with no concern, and when I showed it a set of corners it devoured them hungrily. I’ve got a little bit of a history of owning big cars that surprise in the twisties, a few years back I had a Tailgate McNoIndicate E34 520i with aftermarket dampers and springs and the big brakes from the V12 E32 7 series, and that hustled a B road like no car of that size should, and the Volvo quite rightfully put that to shame.
So, car packed the night before, we set off towards Dover in time for the boy’s first nap.



In the queue for the ferry:



Rest stop in Belgium:





First of many, many, many fuel stops! Averaging about 75-80mph and keeping a constant-ish speed meant I could just about manage 30mpg, which meant just North of 400 miles to a 70L/15G tank. Anything faster or more interesting and the range plummeted, it’s certainly a thirsty car:








Overnight in Longwy, we intended to stay in Luxembourg but after calculating total costs for the month away we started penny pinching where we could, this purpose-built hotel was similar quality to a Premier Inn, conveniently located, and about a 1/3 of the price of staying in and around Luxembourg so made a lot of sense:





On day 2 we drove on a lot of de-restricted autobahn in Germany. For all the talk about the total length of derestricted sections reducing every year, almost our entire route through Germany was de-restricted. The Volvo easily managed an indicated 150mph, but the combination of full boot causing the front end to feel floaty, and the traffic levels, meant that I didn’t want to maintain 100mph+ for long periods of time. Bavarians are extremely aggressive drivers and if they were in the outside lane, they wanted to drive 120mph+, so it made it difficult to drive at the speed I wanted to. I ended up sticking to about 80mph as that was the speed of the 2nd lane, moving into the outside lane meant I had to keep accelerating and braking and it just wasn’t enjoyable. I did take the opportunity to stretch the legs and “have a play” with a couple of cars, a few Porsche, Audi, and Tailgate McNoIndicate owners were suitably surprised by the pace, but on encountering my first 991 GT2 RS in the wild, not far South of Stuttgart, I quickly pulled into the outside lane to give chase, not because I thought I had a hope in hell of beating him, but I wanted to get a longer look at the back of the car. Sadly, that is a flipping quick car and I think seeing a 1996 Volvo on UK plates pull out aggressively behind him got the driver riled up and it tore off at a pace that was frankly impressive. I was pleased I got to see one at full chat even if it meant I didn’t get to appreciate it’s beauty for long.


The photo taking got a bit sprear canoe here, I apologise, but we stopped overnight in Memmingen, and the next day I finally got to do some interesting driving in Austria. As it was the end of April, most of the decent passes were still closed, and while Glosslockner had just opened, the weather was horrific up there and it was too big a detour. So we settled for Kuthai pass, frustratingly, the bab fell asleep just as we began our ascent so all the pics had to be from the moving car taken by my wife:
Crossing the border and stopping to buy the vignette:














In a complete stroke of luck, a friend who had been recently made redundant and was touring Europe for 2 months on his Triumph Tiger was staying just 45 mins from us in Germany, and was planning on being in Innsbruck that afternoon. I had invited him to Puglia as part of his tour but it was too far South for him, but we hadn’t considered our routes might overlap when we were on the way down there. We lost communication with him in the morning as he was on the bike, there was a mix-up on my part as I’d calculated my route for the day wrong and I thought we had to cancel our meetup so I sent him a message letting him know, then I realised my mistake so I messaged him again, but as he was on the bike he hadn’t seen any of them. He’d shared his live location with me on WhatsApp so once we came off Kuthai pass, I joined the motorway to Innsbruck, and my wife checked his location, he was just 1 mile behind us! What a stroke of luck, so I slowed down, let him overtake, then followed him into Innsbruck.






After a great lunch and catch up, we wished each other luck on our separate journeys and we set off, despite initially planning on taking the valley road out of Austria, due to an extended lunch we cruised on the motorway, which still afforded epic scenery. The descent out of the Alps and into Italy is seemingly never-ending, we must have been going downhill for about 1.5 hours! Our destination in Ala Avio was just beautiful and made for a great overnight stop:


Initial parking spot, but we were told to move the car




not complaining…


Great balcony view!



The next day was a heavy day on the Italian Autostrada, about €40 in tolls, and a fair bit of tedium, no pics until our destination, Ortana. We stayed in a hotel rebuilt from ruins, with amazing views:








The only other guests (low season) were Japanese and had rented a Q2, the husband was incredibly shocked that I had driven a 22 year old car so far from home and shook my hand very vigorously





Day 5, we decided to stay off the Autostrada and enjoy the scenery. This was good and bad. The roads of Southern Italy are diabolical, but the coast is beautiful. Here we stopped for a coffee in Foggia, which allowed me to make dad jokes such as, “I haven’t the Foggia where we are”.





€1 for an Espresso and €1 for a cornetto (Italian Croissant) finally we were quids in.


Next stop, Taranto. My first of 4 interactions with local Mafioso, if you park in metered bays out of payment hours then people come and charge you €1/hour to “look after” your car. This is the same charge as the parking that goes in the meter when it’s during payment hours. I was warned of this in advance so I made sure I had plenty of €1 coins in my pocket. A friend had his rental car keyed many times in Lecce for telling one of these people to bugger off, so his advice was to just pay them.








Finally, after 5 days on the road, we arrived at the apartment in Torre Colimena!













I had taken a bottle of Meguiars Waterless Wash and Wax, basically quick detailer, with me, and some microfibre towels, so after jetwashing most of the crap off, I spent an hour using nearly the whole bottle (£15 and should be 4 cars worth). I was suitably impressed with the result, although it really helps that the car has had a ceramic coating applied so it needs little cleaning to get it looking good. Of course, it rained as soon as I finished.











The 3 weeks in Salento (the southern region of Puglia) were spent visiting towns, beaches, and eating seafood, salami, cheese, and pizza. The car was often left parked in positions that had me worried all day like below:


Gallipoli








Beach at Gallipoli





Clear water at Otranto





Amazing town of Matera with cave dwellings











More clear water in Otranto





After 3 heavenly weeks, we plotted a route home via Switzerland so we could take in the San Bernardino pass. Gotthard opened the day after we’d be going through Switzerland but we were very time restricted, so sadly I missed out on Gotthard and of course all the other incredible Swiss passes, but I think I’d rather go back with “the lads” and drive them properly, rather than as quick as I dare with a baby in the back. The Mille Miglia had been on recently and I researched some of the roads and I discovered that the section of route between Florence and Bologna, the SR65/SP65 was an incredible section, and tying in a stop in Florence overnight kept both me and the wife happy. I don’t have many photos, but I do have a full GoPro vid so will upload some clips later.

Futa Pass as part of the MM route





Duomo in Florence, I’d never been before, this place is incredible. I was blown away, I couldn’t believe the beauty of this town.

















Paid €25 to park overnight in a garage in the old town, which meant I could drive into the very restricted zone in Florence





On the way up to Switzerland we stopped for a rest at Lake Como








And then after getting off the motorway a little early and up the 25 or so hairpins, we stopped overnight in a no frill hostel just past the village of San Bernardino, just past the barrier to the pass





The pass, well it was fantastic, but too many hairpins for my liking. The section at the top was beautiful and flowing, but up and down was all hairpins and the Volvo does not have the lock for tight hairpins. It was a giggle boosting out of them in 1st gear and utilising the massive brakes, but it got a little boring after a while.


The view from the top:











After the joy of the pass we settled back into the motorways and still enjoyed dramatic scenery to the sides, but that too slowly settled down and we checked off Basel and then the Vosges Mountains on our way to Bar-Le-Duc. I accidentally took the wrong turn and ended up doing the Vosges tunnel instead of going “over the top”, but I’ve driven the Vosges roads a couple of times before and they’re nothing to write home about. The tunnel allowed me to film some 2nd gear fun with whooshy noises and popping and banging.


Our parking spot overnight:





Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take any photos on the last day between there and home, there wasn’t much to see anyway, and we’ve all seen pics of cars at Calais a million times. We made it back fine, I was thoroughly satisfied with the car and the trip and there’s a big clean to do on the car both in and out. I clocked up around 4,400 miles on the trip, the car is now due an oil change, and it has picked up a chatter that goes away when the clutch pedal is depressed so I’m guessing it needs a new release bearing, possibly clutch too. On top of that there’s of course the A/C issue to rectify, it was sorely, sorely missed on the trip, if only because driving long distance with the windows open is incredibly tiring, but of more concern is a judder under braking. I bought the car knowing the front subframe mounts needed replacing, this seems to be manifesting itself mostly in this judder under braking, it didn’t seem an issue when I first picked it up, but 4,400 miles in a month has made it more of a pressing issue, it got to the point where I didn’t want to brake because it was annoying, which is obviously not an ideal scenario. I also need to get the E39 sold as it’s currently on my parents’ driveway and get my MX5 ready for a trackday at Llandow at the end of the month!