So with 2022 coming to an end at the time of writing this blog, I thought I’d share my car-related plans with everyone in 2023. This year has been an absolute rollercoaster in terms of personal issues so as you can imagine, there haven’t been a lot of car-related shenanigans happening this year. Whilst I did get to see the absolutely incredible Aston Martin LM4 a couple of months ago, that was more due to luck than a planned event. With that in mind, here is what I hope will be happening in 2023 and if everything goes to plan, an old friend of the blogs might be making a return!

I understand that the blogs haven’t been happening this year due to a few things. firstly, I had to move from the Angus area of Scotland back down to the Ayrshire region of Scotland back in February which obviously took a lot of time, money & effort to do. Since moving back down this way, I’ve had to go job searching again which is never easy or quick. With everything happening, certain things haven’t quite yet come back home. I do plan on writing more come the new year and whilst I am indeed a car guy throughout, these last few years, I have found myself getting more and more into HGV’s/Semi Trucks so there could be a few trucks-related articles coming to the Blogs as a way to break up the usual posts I currently do.

People that follow my blogs and my socials may remember me posting about a ‘W140′ S500 Project that I’d acquired as both a 2nd car and an attainable dream car of mine. well, unfortunately, that deal fell through quite significantly and there was nothing I could do about it to keep the car. Add in the UK’s current economic situation and whilst it isn’t amazing, I couldn’t run a big old V8 in this current climate so that is no longer with me. Those that have been here since the very beginning will know that I also own a ’00’ Volvo C70 Coupė that has been said to be a keeper and that is still the case. Whilst on the subject of the Volvo, for those that are here for the C70-related content, I have some information!

To those that don’t know, the C70 is currently still in storage safe & sound up where I used to live & whilst that isn’t exactly what I’d like, be assured I haven’t abandoned it. I do have a plan regarding what will be happening with the C70 and believe me, it won’t be easy and it’ll be tough both mentally & physically but I am determined to get it running for an extremely personal reason that I will reveal in a further article. For the time being, what I will say is that I plan on making a list of the parts it needs and eventually buying & eventually fitting all the parts on said list. I can’t promise that it’ll be 100% completed by the end of next year but I hope to be pretty damned close.

Once the C70 is finished, I do plan on taking it to shows like the ‘Practical Classics Classic Car & Restoration Show’ that happens every October/November of the year. I would also like to take it on some road trips and these comprise of driving down to the village of Goathland down in Yorkshire to hang around with a good friend of mine as well as enjoy the roads that Yorkshire has to offer. I would also love to take it on a trip around the NC500 up in the Highlands of Scotland. I would like to take the C70 on other major road trips but they can wait for now. In the meantime, I’d take it to local meets and shows just like I used to do a good few years ago.

To make sure the C70 has the best fighting chance at being resurrected, I will only be getting the best Volvo Genuine Parts for it both from Volvo themselves as well as numerous different Volvo-related parts websites that are out there on the Interwebs. To make sure this is possible, I have started to save up some money so I can buy all the parts that I need to get her running again. The only downside in all of this really is the weather and time restraints due to not having a garage or carport down this way like I did up in Angus.

Even though not having a garage or a carport is a bit of a downside of living here, and even though I have the weather and time against me as well, I’m 100% in wanting to make this work. Now I know that fixing the C70’s issues won’t happen overnight and it will take a lot of dedication to make it come together but as of right now, I have started to make some effort by ordering tools & equipment together so that when the project does resume, we’ll be able to go guns blazing on the project which will mean more updates on the progress both quicker & a lot more often.

As mentioned earlier, I do plan on writing more articles over the year as I have been severely lacking in that area. I also need to be quite a bit more active on social media as well as I’m lacking there too, but I do hope that with progress on the car comes more opportunities to post and write in both areas. This might mean a few upgrades to my PC just so it can cope but with the right tools and know-how, I can’t see the PC impeding things.

I also want to support small, family-run businesses when I eventually get the C70 back home and start the work. Apart from getting a good amount of parts from the likes of Volvo and well-known Volvo parts suppliers, I really want to get a lot of the things that need to be done to that car by smaller, lesser-known companies. Not just because it’s the right thing to do but because for a majority of the time, they do a better job than the favoured & wider-known companies that the UK car community has to offer.

This does mean that I’ll need to travel to the region of Glasgow to get a good amount of the stuff done but I do feel like that’s a small fee to pay for the quality of the work. For the stuff that can’t be done around here, they will be getting sent away to England or elsewhere in the UK to get fixed. Even though I’d prefer to be face to face with a representative of a particular company that’s ultimately working on the car (so I know what’s actually going into it), sometimes things are out of people’s control and I know that’ll be the case when it comes to certain stuff that needs to be fixed on the car.

Now it has been known that over these last few years, I’ve not actually gone to town on the car as I used to do at the start of my ownership and that is, unfortunately, accurate but I really want to put all my effort into it come the new year because, for a start, I want to get back to appreciating it again and secondly, with prices of these cars going up and numbers of these cars going down, if I don’t save it, the MK1 C70 Coupė will slowly but surely start to dwindle away to nothingness and I really don’t want that happening.

That’s enough about the C70 though, next year I want to do a lot more things than just wrench and swear over the Volvo’s progress. I would like to get back to more events and such because I really enjoy going to them as well as taking pictures with my DSLR camera. I’d also love to get back to some car meets as well, especially Tartan Tarmac meets because they’re always run incredibly well by a great bunch of guys, plus, It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a meet hosted by them.

Primarily though, I want to get back to driving again. Whilst I have been driving since I was 18, I haven’t been able to drive properly for the last few years due to ill health & other personal issues. I’m hoping that can change within the new year because if there’s one thing I love doing and that is driving. Thankfully, we do have a plan in place so that I can get back to driving again which should be good. Getting back into the driver’s seat again will also come in handy when it comes to getting parts of the C70 fixed up.

The car I’ll be using for this is truthfully something a little bit different than I’m used to and dare I say something I’m intrigued about trying out. Since I was last down here back in 2020, the new family hack has been changed from a 2007 Seat Altea XL MPV thing to a 2008 Toyota RAV-4 MK3 High-Mileage-Hero. Now that change might not sound all that exciting to a lot of people reading this and normally I’d agree but the RAV-4 I’ll be sampling isn’t just a run-of-the-mill variant that’s nothing to shout about. I understand this doesn’t come up in conversation a lot but whenever the mention of an MK3 Toyota RAV-4 is mentioned, a majority of people run for the hills and rightly so but those who decide to stick around will ultimately find out that throughout its life, it had a plethora of powertrains available dependant on which market you were in.

For example, in the USA you could option the RAV-4 MK3 ‘XA30’ as it was known with, the then-current 3.5 litre V6 that was primarily found in the Camry of the same time. Over here in the Uk though, we got a 2.0 petrol 4-cylinder lump that put out about 130bhp, and 2 types of diesel engines available. These both came in 2.2 flavours or ‘Guise’ if you will. Normally, the 2.2 ‘D-4D’ unit put out 150bhp in standard guise but if you paid out a bit extra money you could get a trim level called the ‘T180’, as the name suggests, this variant had a 180bhp variant of the same 2.2 diesel found in the standard car. Attached to that was a 6-speed gearbox and AWD which made it surprisingly spritely compared to the 150bhp model and its competition at the time. Add in Toyota’s reliability, its rarity and the fact that it was the top-spec model of the ‘XA30’ here in the UK, and this meant that it had literally everything thrown at it from Toyota back when it was new.

Our ‘XA30’ ‘T180’ has around about 160k miles under its belt which is doing well for a 14-year-old car that has stayed in Scotland all of its life. In saying that though, compared to other cars we’ve had with similar mileage, the Toyota seems to be holding up a lot better. The plan with that car is to keep it going for the time being and slowly but surely get it to pass the 200k mile mark. I can’t see it being an issue personally because the way it drives at the moment would suggest it’s only on 60k instead of 160k but here we are. To be able to put miles onto it so it can reach the 200k milestone is something I’m looking forward to doing I can’t lie.

Generally speaking though, apart from sorting things out with the Volvo, getting behind the wheel of the RAV-4 and driving again as well as writing a lot more articles and keeping up with social media a bit better than I currently am, I don’t ever intend on changing too much. I’ll still be the same idiot breaking stuff and generally having a laugh whilst trying to work out and understand this wonderful thing called life and that’s all I could ever ask for or do.

So with all that being said, and with 2022 coming to an end, I hope everyone here has an incredible Christmas & New Year Celebration and goes into 2023 with their head held high. Even if 2022 hasn’t been your year, just remember that you’ve fought this far and you’ve gotten through it and better things are coming. Every day is a new day and regardless of how things have gone this year, there’s always a new year to look forward to. So from myself and my family to you and yours, I hope you’ve had a great Christmas and I hope you have an even better year!

Hope You Enjoy!

Alex Jebson