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More love for the Volvo here. I was once lucky enough to own 240 GL estate. A truly fantastic car and ****ing massive on the inside, despite looking quite moderately proportioned from the outside - completely the opposite of most modern cars which are designed to look huge and are actually tiny inside.
I too once got a whole 3 seater sofa inside (completely, tailgate shut) for a friend. Not a small one either, a massive long thing with chunky arms.
No doubting that's your car is there binners? Or should I say BINN3R5?
Volvo FTW! Not quite bangernomic territory, but I've just bought a 10-year-old XC70, and it's just brilliant. I was hauling a very heavy cast iron garden roller about with it last night - couldn't have done that in our old Smart car 😉
My uncle in the States made a kit to fit a Ford Mustang engine into the 740 and 940 - it was just silly. He made one for Paul Newman:
http://www.swedespeed.com/news/publish/Features/printer_33.html
Most estates nowadays are shooting brakes
They always were. Shooting brake is just another name for an estate though it hasn't been in use in Britain for many decades. It's more an Americanism in recent decades, though I gather it has been resurrected to describe a sort of coupe/estate.
The term brake refers to a horse drawn vehicle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting-brake
id say with the money spent on it now its gone from bangernomics back into loved classic territory.
To be honest it was this good when I got it but I just tidied it up a bit and sorted a few niggles and services it.
Don't ask the mpg. 😯
91 Citroen bx with 195k bought for £300 with full service history a year ago.
I replaced belts, front tyres and a couple of radiator hoses for a cost of £90 and put 12k on it this year, failed the mot on a ball joint, £13 for the part and £20 for the special tool resulted in a fresh years ticket.
It all depends on how much work you are prepared to do yourself.
1.5 3valve proton mp something or other £250 plus my regularly stolen escort in part exchange.
No maintenance, no oil, ran for a year, used to hit speed bumps in Heaton in Newcastle at 30mph 5 up and just laugh as it crashed over them.
Only stopped using it after I picked up another banger, and a mate left the proton a street somewhre, and forgot where!
Eventually found it a couple of months later with a strawberry pink mould in the footwel from the McDonald's strawberry milkshake he left in it
The protons are beyond dull but some have lasted forever. Older ones are kinda cool now in a boxy 80's retroness sort of way.
^ my mate and I saw it in a scrapper, a good 12 years after we had last seen it a couple of years back.
Sat near the top of the pile, still the odd coloured door. Appeared to still have the beaded seat covers in it as well.
Such a good car. Ace for going to the pub in dodgy areas, could leave it out overnight, and nobody ever stole it or touched it. Couldn't say the same for my old G reg escort, used to turn my back on it and someone would have nicked it.
Current one isn't the most sensible shed purchase, fair number of model specific parts, several high cost parts to potentially fail.
But it was rather cheap and has enough ground clearance to not worry about taking it easy on farm and forest tracks.
Very little history with the car unfortunately, which combined with nearly 200k on the clock and the mapping costing half as much as the cars value means that I probably won't be seeing how much can be got out of the 1.8t.
And because it is like a bouncy castle at speed due to the raised ride height.
OP, the van sounds a safe bet, bit cheaper would be ideal, they're not popular vans (but that is just because other stuff went into fleets).
I've got a 2005 Doblo Cargo 1.9jtd
I bought it 18 months ago.
I've probably spent £300 so far keeping it on the road (although £200 of that I'm sure I was ripped off for work on an MOT, never again). The engine runs great, only changed the oil once. I'm not saying they're all the same but this one's been good. Oh it's got 115,000 ish on it.