Current Projects

Current Short Term Projects:

I have several cars that I’m playing with that I may have for only a few months or possibly a few years. How long I keep a car is always up in the air, much to my wife’s annoyance.

There is a 2005 CL600 Mercedes that I split the purchase price with a friend so that we could pick up our first v12 without investing much. It has 54K miles on the clock, some nice wheels, it was an unregrettable purchase even though neither of us have driven it much during our 6 months of ownership. Having a twin turbo v12 that you get to take out and flog any time you like is a nice thing to brag about even if you don’t do it often.

2008 V50 T5 AWD: this is the supposed to be the daily driver in a few weeks. Reasonably nice car, even though when it arrived it was not the car described in the add at all. After weeks of deliberation prices were adjusted and I ended up keeping the car and in the process of personalizing it.

2012 XC70 T6 Polestar tuned: this is the project I’m most excited about. I’m going to turn this into the only V70 T6 AWD R-Design in North America. It’s probably about half completed at this point. This is similar to what the finished results should look like.

I will write individual entries about each of the Volvos for sure. Maybe or maybe not on the Benz.

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Longer term projects:

Currently I am trying my hand at buying cars and trying to make a profit marketing parts to the Volvo community. I’ve grow tired of the headache and drama of fixing an entire car to re-sell, but selling parts has less drama and a slower pace. I enjoy the interaction with the community too, so hopefully it will pay off OK.

My long term goal is to live off my job income and use the extra income to catch up on debts accrued during the years of hospital visits. The dream is of course debt free living, but that’s still a ways off as deleting a house payment is a good bit of work. There is $69k left on the principle as of the time of writing this and a portion of all sales go to the principle. And yes, to you finance nerds out there I realize that if money invested has a higher rate of return than the house it’s a bad idea to put more on the principle. I want to because removing the mortgage has been a goal all along. I also really want a different house, so that weighs in here too…

The amount is low enough that I could cash in a lot of investments and nearly pay it off, but if I did that I wouldn’t have any money to invest with, so slowly slowly I will take down the principle and focus on keeping the money floating around in investments that pay dividends. Current investments? First generation Volvo C70’s.

and lots of rare Volvo wheels

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Extra long term project:

I want a Bentley Brooklands. My wife is a writer and the arrangement is that when she gets famous she will buy me one. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll get one by my own means eventually. She claims she wants a Koenigsegg, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I’ll not give up hope though. I firmly believe anything is possible but I also am a bit of a realist though and realize the odds of having one due the compromise necessary to purchase a car in that price bracket is probably not ones we are willing to make.

Another personal dream of a car is an Arden Jaguar Series 3 replica with a modern drive train and custom interior. The same is true in wanting a custom 560SEC wide-body replica. A retrofit of modern and vintage is my strongest dream at the moment. A modern reliable drive drain combined with the vintage styling, and subtle interior tweaks for an over all seem-less retrofit of modern technology. If taking one on I would hands down pick the SEC as it would be infinitely easier to work on than the XJ.