Howdy all, I just purchased this 1985 245 DL on eBay, and despite what I thought was an extensive knowledge of the 240, I have so many questions about what this car was, is, and how it got that way.

No US market 240 in 1985--to my knowledge--came with this car's flat hood, matching grille and two-tone corner lamps. And while I can (and will) shoot some non-auction images other than the one below (you can see the weather sucks here), EVERYTHING about this says either it left the factory this way or was revamped as a flat hood so exactly that every nut, bolt, sticker, etc. is so perfectly placed and fitted (except the right hood hinge leaves a little fender-to-hood gap as you can see in pics that I'm about to fix) that it seems cost-prohibitive.

When I searched its VIN on VINCheck.info something interesting popped up that wasn't on the AutoCheck report: It says "Made In: Sweden" AND "Made In City: Halifax". But while it may explain the lights, Canadian '85s don't have flat hoods, either. I can't go back any further than the apparent date of importation, 5/16/1988 with just 55,779 miles [yeah, should've mentioned it's got 'Murrican gauges not metric] on the clock. Curiouser--as the saying goes--is the fact that its first registration was 9/05/97, with both of the aforementioned happening in Goldsboro, NC.

I know flat hoods are prized by many--I'm not really one of them--but even with this being the last year that you didn't have to swap bodywork and whatever else to perform the conversion, this still must have taken some doing. [Also, it has a Volvo-branded steering wheel I've never seen, headrest covers that aren't Volvo-branded and a center armrest (ditto). Points for identifying them, too.]

She's a beautiful time capsule despite her 300k-plus miles that I want to know as much as I can about. Was there a secret flathood cult in Canada or North Carolina I don't know about? Was this conversion not the bear everyone says it would be to perform? Did Volvo build special "Halifax Edition" flathood '85s? So many questions!

Thanks in advance... AWD



Her hood maybe flat, but she's curvy in all the right places...

 

i'm surprised they didn't go for the single-round headlghts to go with that flat hood. thats almost certainly a conversion.

I'd take a close look at the grill, the long nose hoods were matched with a grill that stuck out, and most of the flat hoods had a completely different much wider grill with much smaller headlight assemblies...

like this 78...

 

early long nose...

 

here's a US market 1985 with the twin rectangulars. again note the grill sticks out...

 

Very interesting setup. As Pierce points out that if it is a conversion, I don't know how they got the grill to match up so nicely. You'll have to look behind the grill to find out if it all was adapted. Certainly the headlights could have come from a long nose but the grill doesn't look that way.

 

another note, those early years didn't have a chin spoiler, but that had appeared by 1985 (and probably earlier).

also the early years, the bumper was different, with metal top and bottom, by 85 they had adopted the 'hockey puck' trims on the top of the bumper with chrome flashing, your car appears to not have these but looks like the later style bumper.