The story of Keith Morgan’s one-owner Volvo 145 De Luxe is one of redemption.
After a terrible start in life, breaking down on its maiden voyage to Scotland, Keith was so disappointed with the car he returned it to the dealer and told them he didn’t want it back.
“I said ‘I don’t want it – if that’s what you call a Volvo, you can keep the damn thing’,” says the 76-year-old, who runs Morgan’s Motor Engineers near Norwich.
“After three weeks they said ‘if you don’t come and collect your car, we’re going to push it out into the street’, so we had to go and get it.”
Since then, the car has covered a trouble-free 106,400 miles and become a trusted family workhorse for three generations of Morgans.
“After its poor beginning it’s really rewarded us because you can do anything with that car, you can pull anything, and it’s never let us down apart from that first instance,” says Keith, chatting at the workshop opened by his father Terry in 1947.
“It’s been a real tough workhorse and stood up well to extreme tasks like carrying concrete posts and quarry tiles, which weighed it down so much the rear mud flaps were on the ground.”
Now, the car he didn’t want will never be sold.
“It was only ever for sale once, when the dealer sold it to me, and it will eventually pass to my son William,” says Keith. “I just don’t part with anything.”
He’s not kidding, with father and son owning many cars between them, including some gifted to them by grateful customers.
READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH
A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.
The collection includes a 1966 Vauxhall Cresta PC that Keith has owned from new, a Morris Minor he started looking after for a customer in 1971, and a Mercedes 300D given to him by his former engineering college master.
Keith’s first car was a Singer Gazelle, followed by a Singer Chamois, a luxury version of the Hillman Imp, before he graduated to the Cresta, a powerful 3.3-litre saloon, at the age of 18.
Fast forward to 1974, and Terry and Keith set their sights on a Volvo, for a couple of reasons.
“I was going on a camping holiday to Scotland, and the Cresta was eight years old, so we decided to get a new car,” says Keith. “And father did a lot of fishing off the coast at Walcott, and the Fiat 2300 Estate he had was an absolute pile of rubbish that couldn’t pull a boat up a slipway. So the idea was that we could both use it, first for the holiday, then pulling the boat and rough work.
“We’d had Volvos in the garage to work on, and they seem very robust. I was very impressed with how they were built.”
So off they went to the Volvo dealer in the city, aiming for an estate car in white, their usual choice of colour.
“I said ‘I’d like a white one’, and the salesman said ‘oh no, they look like an ambulance in white, you need orange, a safe colour’,” remembers Keith. “Orange had been voted the safest colour.
“I asked him if there were any new models coming out, and he said ‘no, an estate car is an estate car’, so we bought the 145 for £2,650 and collected it on August 1, 1974.
“However, in September 1974 the 245 arrived…”
Things didn’t get much better when Terry decided to check the car over ahead of his son’s trip to Scotland.
82.4% of customers could get a cheaper quote over the phone
Protect your car with tailor-made classic car insurance, including agreed value cover and discounts for limited mileage and owners club discounts
“Father was meticulous, and when he checked it over he found that the front wheel alignment was out, the headlamps were out of alignment, and the distributor was dancing backwards and forwards,” says Keith. “We sorted the alignments out and timed it up with the Crypton tuning machine.”
So Keith set off for the far north of Scotland with his friend Stephen Fotherby, driving more than 600 miles in the new Volvo to John O’Groats and travelling along the north coast to Tongue before heading back south.
“In those days you could just take a tent, stop somewhere and pitch it up and you were quite safe,” he says. “I don’t know if it would be the same these days.”
On the way back, however, Keith was doing his daily checks on the car (meticulous like his father), when he took the radiator cap off and spotted oil in the coolant.
They had got as far as Lancashire and, with too much of the journey left to risk wrecking the engine, got a colleague in the trade from Norwich to travel north to tow them home.
“I said to the dealer I would like either a refund or a new car, but they refused and said they were going to put a new engine in instead,” says Keith, who reluctantly collected the Volvo after several weeks.
“Within a few months there was rust coming up on it and all sorts. You could also see that the dealer had painted the doors when it was new – under streetlights they looked a yellowy colour and a different shade to the rest of the car.
“Eventually father gave it a respray in 1980 in its original orange cellulose paint. That’s the same paint that’s on it now.”
READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH
A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.
After its early troubles, the 145, launched in 1966 as the estate version of the 144 saloon, was put to work towing Terry’s 19ft dory fishing boat, or his crab boat with an inboard engine, and anything else where load carrying was required.
“We also transported a vehicle over to Wales for a man who had looked after us when we went there on holiday,” says Keith. “He got in a muddle when his cambelt went on his Isuzu Trooper, so we dragged his new vehicle behind the Volvo all the way to Wales.
“It’s also moved the entire contents of a four-bedroom house.”
When Terry sadly died in 1987, Keith kept the car in good working order, with only minimal work required other than servicing.
“The only corrosion has been the odd bit in the bottom of the back wings, and I had a little plate put in there,” he says. “I’ve looked after it, cleaned it down and put oil underneath it to stop it from rotting – just ordinary engine oil under the wings.
“I’ve had the cylinder head adapted with hardened valve seats to take unleaded fuel, and while the engine was down I put new pistons rings in and new crank bearings.
“I had a replacement fuel tank put in it last year, and get very good service from Paul in the stores at Hylton Gott at Crimplesham, who gives me part numbers to get proper stuff for it.
“If you service them with decent stuff and you service them when they should be serviced, anything will last. People ridiculed Skodas, but we had them coming here in 1971 and they advocated changing the oil and filter every 2,000 miles and, if you did it, they never gave any trouble.”
These days, the Volvo is used as it always was.
“If I’ve got anything to cart about I use it, if I want to go up the dump and put the garden rubbish in the back, I use it,” says Keith. “That’s what they’re for – it’s not an ornament.
“It’s not a showpiece, it’s a workhorse to do a job. It’s always been used in its 50 years.”
As well as tip runs and hauling stuff about, the Volvo transports the family’s two dogs, a Jack Russell and Yorkshire/Norfolk terrier cross, and attends the odd car show and autojumble.
“I got introduced to autojumbles, and when people turn up in older cars they’d flag you through, so you don’t have to pay to get in,” says Keith, “and with a car like that I can bring a lot of stuff I don’t need back home.
“You do get a lot of people interested at shows, but I do wonder why people are so interested in that old car.”
William, who works in the garage with his father, and is just as much of a car hoarder, remembers being dropped off at school in the Volvo.
“Probably the first thing I can remember is riding in the middle of the back seat of it in my child seat, and seeing the rear fog light sign on in the centre console,” he adds.
“I think that car will outlive us all.”
