Thursday, May 24, 2012

Carspotting: Volvo S80 safety car


This is one of those cars that you recognize from a mile away.  With all those yellow reflective stickers, I notice it almost every time I see it when I'm in downtown Berkeley.

It reminds of Alyssa Milano's safety car in Who's the Boss?

It's a small miracle that the car is still alive.  When was the last time you saw an S80, with its transmission and electrical woes?

3 comments:

Edvin said...

Was there really an official S80 Safety model with that yellow tape as standard? Looks really tacky.

Does the S80 have bad reputation for reliability in the US? I'm not that into Volvos, but I can't remember hearing too much bad about the S80. Then again maybe we're used to many European cars being a handful maintenance-wise compared to Japanese cars.

Maxichamp said...

@Edvin: The S80 wasn't a huge seller but I believe it had major reliability issues.

The "safety car" is a one-off. Typical of eccentric Berkeleyites.

Anonymous said...

I hate when people paste "safety" reflective stickers on their cars. Is so sad! And useless, I mean... cars have lights!

But those I see here are red and white, not yellow. And often only on old and cheap cars.