Volvo V70 T5 | Shed of the Week

Appearances can be deceptive...

Forgiveness is a wonderful thing if you’ve got it in you. When you’ve come home from a long day at the grindstone only to find that the dog has eaten not only your tea but also most of the sofa, there’s nothing quite like that feeling of saintliness you get from turning the other cheek. Or when you manage to laugh gaily as you look out of the window to see next door’s brats playfully bending your windscreen wipers.

If you do have a forgiveness knob about your person you’ll have to turn it up to 11 for this week’s shed. Warhorse would be a polite description. Shed’s eyesight is about as good as a mole’s on a dark night but even he can see the slight colour mismatch between the bonnet and the rest of the car. The steering wheel rim looks biologically unsound, the seat leather is as dry as a camel’s anus and there’s a damp patch in the driver’s footwell that might explain why they called it a well.

Any one of these flaws would have you running a mile from any other car but surely not here, not when we’re looking at easily the cheapest roadworthy Volvo V70 T5 on sale in the UK and maybe anywhere.

That’s right, despite its battered appearance it is legally roadworthy in the UK with a valid MOT to July, the only advisories being on a couple of worn but not yet knackered brake discs and one tyre in similar condition. If nothing else has transpired since last July and you’re vaguely spanner-friendly your total expenditure on keeping this classic machine going could be under a hundred notes.

Before you know it you’ll be embarking on a shedman restoration. Rattle-canning the bonnet and bumpers, treating the leather and paying somebody else to do a valet (even shedmen have limits) could again come in at under a hundo. If you’re feeling inspired after that, a £300 wheel refurb will complete the project. Even with £500 spent you’d still have the cheapest T5 in Britain – the nearest one Shed found to it was a 163,000-miler with oil in the coolant – but it would look a lot more like the ones you see in the classifieds that are going for £3k-£4k.

That’s if you can find a gen-one V70 T5 like this. Basically it’s an 850 with more rounded lines and there really aren’t many of these around in T5 spec. The 2.3-litre inline five with high-pressure turbo makes it a 20th century car with 21st century performance. 237hp at 5,400rpm, 243lb ft from 2,500-5,100rpm and a weight of just 1,450kg adds up to 0-62 times of 7.4 seconds in auto format. That’s the same as you’d get in the higher profile (and considerably more expensive) front-wheel drive version of the V70 R. Top speed is 146mph. The price you pay for over 100hp per litre is a combined fuel consumption figure of just under 25mpg. UK tax is £280 a year.

What about the 197,000 miles though? Shedmen don’t worry about high mileages on cars like this. Trigger’s broom syndrome always comes to your rescue. Not just the small consumables, but many if not most of the bigger ones will have been replaced at least once. The mechanicals are known for their robustness and longevity.

Clearly this wagon has been used hard with next to no attention paid to the cosmetics, but Shed is getting the feeling that it’s been given everything it’s needed to keep it soldiering on. You’ll be able to verify that from the history that comes with it. The instrument pic in the ad shows that it’s idling at the right rpm and the honest-sounding vendor (‘finished mainly in silver’) assures us that the car drives very well with no warning lights or untoward noises from the engine or transmission. On top of the epic five-pot drivetrain you get all the usual V70 attributes of excellent comfort, major practicality (nearly 1,600 litres of luggage space and it should have a third-row seat), plus a banging stereo, which is what Shed still calls a car’s sound system.

Legends don’t usually come cheap. This one could be your ticket to a time when we didn’t give a damn about energy. Just look for the guilt knob – it should be right next to the forgiveness one – and turn it down to zero.

See the full ad here

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Alorotom

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