480,000-Mile 1990 Volvo 240 Review Is as Funny as It Is Insightful
It’s got a manual sunroof and ratchet straps for engine mounts.
Car reviews on YouTube are abundant, which makes it really hard for the good and original ones to stand out. A few have done it with hilarious and funky reviews such as Regular Car Reviews, but now there's another hilarious option to add to that short list: High Mileage Reviews. The relatively-young channel has put out some hilarious videos over the past year, and one of its earliest clips was on a 1990 Volvo 240, which we think is an excellent entrée to the channel’s more highbrow offerings.
Thirty years, four owners, and 480,000 miles haven’t been as rough on this Volvo as you might expect. The 240’s bodywork isn’t in all that bad of shape, thanks in part to its time as an Oregon car, where the roads are rarely salted after snow. As HMR notes, the biggest surprise is the lack of rust, with the only tiny spots peeking through where the paint has been chipped or worn through.
Things are slightly different inside, where parts of the dash have been removed and the seats are torn in several spots. The odometer stopped working in 2002 when the car had traveled 231,727 miles, so it’s unclear how the last 250,000 miles were tracked. The air conditioner was removed in favor nature's AC: windows and a manual sunroof. The radio’s gone, too, along with the tachometer.
Under the hood, the stock 2.3-liter SOHC four-banger remains in place but has had a Garrett TD04 turbo and a Volvo 740 ECU slapped on. The result is a horsepower increase to 180 and torque increase to 220 pound-feet over the 114 hp and 136 pound-feet that the car came with from the factory.
The channel has built a decent following by shooting vehicles of all sorts, with the only requirement appearing to be that the miles are well above average. This Volvo has the most miles of any vehicle reviewed so far, but there’s a 357,000-mile GMC Jimmy, a 325,000-mile Chevy Tahoe, and a 212,000-mile MR2, among others. The funniest seems to be a 2009 Jaguar XJ with only 26,000 miles, since it is, as the video says, “such a delicate British creature.”
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