I drive the kind of old car that when you're taking your son to school and you say you bet that that fellow in that truck wished he had such a fine car as our Volvo 740, and your son says I bet he thinks that guy kidnapped that kid. The oil leaks. The air conditioner is 60,000 miles gone, which makes being pinned on an Atlanta interstate in August a test of human endurance, and the heater rattles in Winter from damaged bearing at a loudness the radio would have if it were still working. Truth be told, less than 30% of the dashboard is still working at 200,000 miles. The headliner is oil paint.
But the engine of my Volvo 740 keeps going despite my phenomenal neglectfulness of its basic maintenance requirements. I'd rather be playing tennis. I am not a shade tree mechanic, although my brother in law has changed the oil a few times. I basically have just put gas in the car and gotten an oil change every 10,000 miles since 1996 when we bought the car with 100,000 miles on it, a 1991 Volvo 740. My total repair bill has totaled about $1000.
And I have always felt confident that the car was safe. My philosophy is that you should buy a car you would want to have in a crash. Although the light started reading that my own air bag passed out of reliability 50,000 miles ago, I have faith that it's the light and not the air-bag, because I have faith in the quality of the engineering. Not only the crash cage and crumple zones of the Volvo 740, which are a contribution from Swedish engineering to human safety, but also the 740 engine, which came out of the wonderful, old dignified, Volvo 240.
Approaching 200,000 miles in my Volvo 740, I appreciate the contribution it has made in allowing me to put a would be car payment for the past decade into my own business in my basement. I am blessed with being a natural optimist so I calculate the future return on having decided to buy the world's most reliable car will be at least twenty million dollars.
Ford, please bring back the Volvo 740. Americans need an inexpensive, safe car manufactured in America. The economy is crashing. Give America a new car for the hard times ahead which is tried and true, the Volvo 740.
The whole world needs to get ready to crash. We need to be ready for crashing on the roads. As individuals and with our friends and families, we drive. In the United States, crashes are brutal. The first wave of SUV's, the giants on the road Ford and others gave us, are now passing too the teenagers in millions of families. We need a safe car like the Volvo 740 to be ready for the onslaught.
I was thinking about Tata Motors in India and their claim to be about to produce the world's cheapest car. What is the cost for a family in having a car? What is the cost for the world? The car doesn't look safe enough. What if Ford open sourced the safety technology of the Volvo 740? Could the Tata be made safer? Maybe Americans should tax ourselves and pay for it as penance for Iraq.
As purely a business matter, the American consumer is going to be suffering from bad credit. I have no idea what precisely my own credit rating is. To be frank, I am lucky not to care, but it may even be half of 740. Millions of us don't have any credit at all, and millions more are consigned to the new serfdom of the debt economy, half of the State of California.
How much difference could it make to the price at the dealership if there had been the absence make of research, development and testing costs, product and industrial engineering, only new side airbags. Ford, please bring back the 740 platform in a pared down basic sedan. Could you sell it for less than $10,000 in the United States? Could you help Tata build the Nano into a crash-proof safety capsule? Safety should be a higher priority. I bet the amazing engineers at Ford and Volvo could come out with an inexpensive 740 replica to be ready to sell in India tomorrow.
Interpreting future economic events is difficult, but an economy seems to be coming conducive to the possibility of Ford to solidify its reputation for innovation and quality as a manufacture, while also saving millions of lives in crashes. I am thankful to the people who created the Volvo 740 for the safe reliable transportation it has given my family. Everyone in the world should have a car like it.