Kids hide in the backseat of 'uncool' car

The recent car stories stirred up the hit meter on the website. Classie Corner's archives include heaps of car stories. Here's another, this time from the Tweed Daily News in July 2001.


THE holiday is over but the sweet sound of a purring motor is still in my ears so for the next few weeks Classie Corner will look under the bonnet of a few deals in the motor market.
BLONDE jokes may have had their day but the mention of a Volvo still raises a smile or two.
"People can be a bit funny about it; they’ll just laugh; it’s strange," says Banora Point’s Christine Cross, who simply loves her 1982 Volvo.
"And my daughter doesn’t like it. She hides in the back seat when I take her to school."
The Cross family’s white Volvo replaces a yellow one of the same model they owned for about a year and recently sold through the Checkout Classifieds.
They received about 15 calls a week after advertising the car for $2990. The calls kept coming even though the car sold in the first week.
Christine is hooked on Volvos, of which she says: "They are the safest car in the world.
"They are so heavy and solid, not those little tincan ones. It’s really heavy metal.
"And they are very smooth on the road.
"But the four-cylinder motor doesn’t cost much to run."
Christine also says the common misconception that Volvo parts are hard to get dates from the pre-generic parts era.
"Parts are not a problem nowadays,’’ she says.
Forget any sneers, it certainly sounds like the Volvo is worth a few smiles.
Give Christine and her family a wave for me when you see them glide along Stonehaven Way.

MY wife hunted around for weeks for a new car before we went on holiday and eventually came up with a great EA Falcon from a dealer who gave a good deal on the trade. When she bought the car home I opened everything up to check for rust and noticed the boot struts had worn out but the lid still stayed up. I went to the front of the car and bounced on it to test the shockies and the boot slammed shut. White-faced wife nearly keeled over. Our six-year-old daughter had withdrawn her head from the boot just a few seconds earlier. Fair dinkum, the lid is so heavy and sharp it would have cut her in two. I publish this story as a warning to all vendors to take car of little details. I can understand how the blokes attached to the car yard could miss something like that. Imagine how you’d feel if you sold a car with that simple fault and wiped out someone’s child. We are just so lucky.