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" Think of the 122S this way: In 1967, when you could pick up a Mustang, Barracuda, or Camaro packing a V8 for $55 less, $5 more, or $308 less respectively, (as it says right here in this musty tome of old R&amp;amp;amp;T back issues from the same year that my car rolled out of some troll cave near the Arctic Circle), why would you buy a Volvo?  Each of these three had at least one multiple of horsepower and possibly several multiples of cool factor over my stodgy, narrow, decidedly pokey 122S. It arrived on these shores with a BorgWarner Type 35 automatic transmission, which R&amp;amp;amp;T then described as &amp;quot;a damned annoyance as it buzzed back and forth from gear to gear and we wished we had a manual box so we could stick it in third and leave it there mile after mile.&amp;quot;  I agree, which is why the car now sports a four-speed &amp;#039;box pulled out of a derelict mold sculpture, sunk to its axles in a pile of oil-soaked kitty litter in a garage of unspeakable horrors. But I&amp;#039;m getting ahead of myself.  I&amp;#039;m not sure I would have chosen the 122S that&amp;#039;s now titled in my name over a midyear Barracuda when new. But I couldn&amp;#039;t stand to see it crushed.  That&amp;#039;s why I scammed the rational portion of my brain into spending a couple hundred bucks to see if this tired Swedish car with the sucker-punched grille would awaken from its slumber.  Awaken it did. This road test comprised the roughly 2600-mile route between Seattle, Washington, (where the car was) to Ann Arbor, Michigan (where I now live).   Let&amp;#039;s get to the interesting parts. If you ask me how it drives, I&amp;#039;ll give you two answers. With the original BorgWarner, it was sort of okay until the slushbox warmed up. At that point, some devious band or cog or other purely mechanical device inside the case stopped doing what it was supposed to, and started slipping. Popping it from L to D and then back to L would lock it in second, using a motion that was sort of like a sequential-column-shifting situation, and it would happily tool along up to about 45 mph. If you were quick about finding a high-speed arterial, you could feel the glory that was third gear for a few minutes, until the slipping started again. At that point, the front disc brakes (and a nearby off-ramp) were greatly appreciated.  That wouldn&amp;#039;t do for anything other than puttering around the neighborhood, which is why I found myself lying in a puddle of cat-litter slurry, filling my beard with spiderwebs, all to extract a manual transmission from a long-dead donor car. The spiders were none too pleased about the bearded, Seattle interloper in their midst.   With the switchover to the M40 four-speed, shifting is a little less complicated but no less acrobatic, considering the 2.5-foot shift lever that protrudes from under the dash. On-ramps require less planning, though, because at roughly 2600 pounds, the Volvo isn&amp;#039;t particularly heavy. And the B20 two-liter, whose output was originally obfuscated by both the infernal BorgWarner as well as a carb tune that can only be described as &amp;quot;barely adequate to support combustion,&amp;quot; actually makes an acceptable amount of power once the mixture is close to correct. Gross output from this unit, a 1971 engine swapped in from a P1800ES donor at some point during my car&amp;#039;s existence, was about 118 hp when new. So we&amp;#039;re in the neighborhood of a Mazda 2 in terms of its power-to-weight ratio. Handling is indifferent at best, boatlike at worst. Body roll is more than pronounced, it is perhaps enunciated. That being said, loading the Volvo to its gills with luggage, spares, and a giant ceramic-head sculpture greatly improved the ride, if not the acceleration. Adjustable suspension!  At idle, this little Volvo makes some interesting noises. There&amp;#039;s the quasi-Doppler-shifted pulsing sounds from the various perforations in the muffler. And there&amp;#039;s the idle itself, which varies between a sickly 500 rpm and an enthusiastic 1600 rpm, depending on the amount of air leaking around the worn-out throttle shaft bushings.  Open it up, and the sound of the carbs hoovering up oxygen and nitrogen in bulk is delightful. And throttle response from the constant-velocity carbs is unexpectedly immediate. In fact, passing is a rush, partially from the sounds of the straining motor, and partially from the unhurried increase in velocity that is entirely uncoupled from the vigorous increase in engine noise. You&amp;#039;d think the car wouldn&amp;#039;t have passed much on a modern road save a diesel Isuzu Trooper, but I&amp;#039;d wager we made at least 12 or 14 successful passes of perfectly modern and competent cars, proving that this country really will give anybody a driver&amp;#039;s license.   While the driving experience is a nice Jell-O salad of anachronisms and surprisingly modern moments, the interior is as vintage as it gets. And it should be. The car was originally released in 1956, and 11 years of production didn&amp;#039;t really alter the scene from behind the wheel, particularly with the gauge cluster\u2014which is more of a strip, dominated by a ribbon tachometer that was apparently the epitome of lameness by 1967, although 46 years later I think it&amp;#039;s a neat touch and a surprisingly legible instrument.  Just below the speedometer is the odometer, which stopped working somewhere in South Dakota. This lack of functionality also came with a wonderful new squeaking noise, which sounded a lot like a very hungry baby bird. Feeling philosophical, a passenger suggested that my fuel economy suddenly became infinite. I don&amp;#039;t like philosophy.  Actually, there&amp;#039;s one aspect of the Volvo more maddening than the odometer&amp;#039;s incessant chirping. And that is the center carrier bearing on the driveshaft, whose singular mission is apparently to drive me batshit insane. In fact, the driveshaft has been a nonstop thorn in my side ever since I had to swap in a new one as part of the transmission switcheroo before the road trip. This all came about because I&amp;#039;d broken off a zerk fitting on one of my driveshaft U-joints. By that point, I&amp;#039;d already pulled and reinstalled that damned propshaft at least 16 times. I love a good DIY project, but when my buddy&amp;#039;s hydraulic press suddenly shot the drift I was using to press out the old U-joint across the room, I handed the whole shebang to a well-known driveshaft shop.  When rebuilding a driveshaft, it&amp;#039;s nice to put in a brand new center bearing. I ordered one from my then-favorite Volvo-parts supplier. What came was some off-brand unit I&amp;#039;ve never heard of. It&amp;#039;s a new bearing! What could go wrong? The driveshaft came back balanced, painted, lubed, and gorgeous, with fancy new U-joints that the shop supplied. Against their better judgment, they used my bearing.  Ever since then, it&amp;#039;s made a variety of cicada-aping noises, occasionally seizing briefly and making a sickening howl. I&amp;#039;ve been force-feeding it a variety of lubricants, crawling under the car to force the spray-can straw past the rubber &amp;quot;donut&amp;quot; that locates the bearing. This became considerably harder when we overloaded the car to make the cross-country drive. The bearing survived, but when I get around to replacing it, I&amp;#039;m going to make sure it has a suitably painful end. Maybe I&amp;#039;ll hook it up to a drill and run it in a tray of grit until it explodes.   All in all, the only thing that failed during my drive was the positive battery cable, an easy repair. Despite their best attempts to relieve me of my sanity, the bearing and the odometer didn&amp;#039;t do much to affect my forward progress. The Volvo chewed up a significant amount of the West&amp;#039;s wide open spaces each day, depositing us (tired and hot) in Ann Arbor after just six days on the road.  Our sinuous &amp;quot;test route&amp;quot; took us through Idaho&amp;#039;s mountain passes, Montana&amp;#039;s sun-baked high plains (and in record heat, too\u2014Great Falls was at 97 degrees Fahrenheit when we passed through), the blinding sandstone cliffs of the Badlands, the endless flat spaces between Rapid City and the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin, and the lurching traffic of I80 through southern Chicago. The Volvo didn&amp;#039;t boil over once.  Which is incredible, considering cars built in 1967 could easily overheat in even the most temperate of circumstances, let alone in heavy urban traffic or up mountain passes with a full load in the trunk; and, needless to say, without 46 years and 135,000 miles of heavy use.  Oskar is a good car. 1967 Volvo 122S   Powertrain: 2.0-liter inline-four, dual SU HS6 carburetors, 118 hp (claimed, 46 years ago), four-speed M40 manual transmission  Fuel Economy (City/Hwy): Terrible/Still terrible  Price as Tested: $3015 in 1967 (or $172 in 2012)  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/road-tests/reviews/a4986/drives-review-1967-volvo-122s-oskar/>