Iron Norse: The Back Story
The story of the world’s newest website for Volvo enthusiasts starts nearly two decades ago with my wife, Patti. The year was 2000, and she had come home from work with a preposterous idea. One of the attorneys where she worked was selling his low-mileage 1998 Volvo S90, and she wanted to buy it.
Patti’s 1998 Volvo S90, circa 2000
Oh, it was a nice car. The last rear-wheel drive sedan Volvo would manufacture, it was black, with a charcoal leather interior, and loaded—including a fantastic sound system. But … the seller was asking more than twice what we had paid for the Subaru Loyale station wagon Patti had been driving. We’d bought that car when she was a stay-at-home mom, but to be fair, she was working outside the home now, at a well-paying job. We bought the Volvo, and proceeded to drive it for the next decade, eventually piling up more than 150,000 miles on the odometer. Our second son drove that car to his high school prom. In the winter, we’d slap on a set of Michelin snow tires, and it would motor up the steep hill to our home snowy winter after snowy winter. Never got stuck. When we sold it—to be replaced by a certified pre-owned 2008 S80 AWD—it felt as tightly screwed together as the day we’d taken ownership of it.
Meanwhile, when I went shopping for a new car in 2001 and found the Tahoe I’d been eyeing had been sold, I didn’t hesitate to suggest that we check out the Volvo dealership where we’d been having my wife’s car serviced. That’s where I found an XC70 Cross-County wagon sitting in the showroom that instantly felt like it belonged in our garage. It was near closing time on a Saturday, and the congenial sales manager asked what car salesman always ask—what would it take to sell you this car? Well, I said, sell it to me at invoice. I never imaged he would. Without hesitation, he did.
I kept that car for two years until we decided we needed something bigger for our growing family of three kids and a dog. We chose a GMC Yukon XL Denali—a gussied-up Suburban—over the then-new first-generation Volvo XC90, which we felt was too small.
Fast forward to 2018. At this point, we hadn’t been without at least one Volvo in our garage since 2000. Although the GMC had served us well—185,000 miles had just clicked over on the odometer—I’d never lost my affection for my XC70. Meanwhile, the second-generation XC90, better and bigger, was just entering its fourth year of production, and I was itching to act on an idea I’d been kicking around for some time—starting a Volvo enthusiast’s website for fans of the brand like my wife and me. But I couldn’t do that with a GMC on my side of the garage, could I?
I started looking for a low-mileage 2017 or 2018 XC90, eager to take advantage of Volvo’s incredible CPO program that extended the full factory warranty to 7 years from the date the vehicle was put into service, or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. (A fantastic program that my dealer informed me was about to be change before the end of the year.) But I was having trouble locating one fitted out the way I wanted it, in a metallic black exterior with four-corner air suspension and graphic head-up display. Our dealer found one that was close—it was missing only the head-up display—but his price, it turned out, wasn’t that much lower than what a new 2019 would cost using Volvo’s A-Plan pricing. A-Plan by Volvo is an employee pricing program that Volvo extends to various affiliate groups, including the Volvo Club of America, which I’d joined years earlier.
We placed the order. Here were the specs:
2019 XC90 – Inscription trim
Metallic black exterior paint
Charcoal interior (soft nappa leather)
Advanced package (included the head-up display)
Heated outboard rear seats and heated steering wheel
Delivery is scheduled for mid-December. And that is the vehicle that will be powering the stories at the Iron Norse website. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.