Junkyard Gem: 1998 Volvo S90
Volvo began selling squared-off, rear-drive-equipped sedans and wagons here starting with the 140 in the 1968 model year, and continued selling those safe and sensible bricks all the way through 1998. The very last Swedish Brick models sold new in the United States were the 960 sedans and wagons, badged respectively as the S90 and V90 during the last couple of years here. We’ve seen one of those V90s in this series, and now it’s time for its corresponding sibling. I found this very clean ’98 S90 in a Silicon Valley yard last December.
It hurts to see a well-cared-for European luxury sedan get this close to 200,000 miles and not quite make it.
The only body damage I could find appeared to have been inflicted after this car entered the used-parts ecosystem. There’s not the slightest hint of rust, of course; this car shows every sign of having spent its entire life in California.
The interior is just beautiful, too. This is almost certainly a one- or two-owner car that got every maintenance item done on the dot and spent its downtime parked out of the sun in a garage.
Dig this top-shelf AM/FM/cassette/CD player with remote disc changer, a $485 option in the 1998 S90 (about $850 in 2022 dollars). The MSRP on the car itself started at $34,300 (around $60,200 now).
So, why is this car in the junkyard? My guess is that some major component (e.g., engine, transmission, differential) failed and a quick comparison between real-world resale value and cost of repair resulted in a call to Pick Your Part. High-end European machinery isn’t cheap to fix, and 25-year-old Volvos aren’t worth much.
While a small but significant fraction of American buyers of the 140, 240 and 740 preferred cars with three pedals, that fraction had shrunk to insignificance by the late 1990s. A four-speed automatic was the only transmission available in the final-year S90 and V90 here (Europeans could get a manual version).
Interestingly, Volvo stuck with the old three-digit numbering system (first digit indicates series, second digit indicates number of engine cylinders, third digit indicates number of doors) for internal company use, decades after ditching it on customer-facing surfaces. This car was a 964 in Göteborg.
Volvo brought back the S90 name for the 2017 model year, and you can buy a new one right now, but it’s neither rear-wheel-drive nor brick-shaped. Sure, the 21st-century S90 is faster, safer, more efficient, and stuffed with better electronic gadgets than the 20th-century version, but is that enough?
Wait, is that a Saab flying next to the 960 in this commercial? Hey, it’s all Sweden (although Volvo became part of the Ford Empire shortly after the final S90s rolled off the assembly line)!
