Here’s a Volvo 240 GL sedan, seen at a car repair shop in northeast Beijing in 2018. Someone parked the poor Volvo in the back of the building, surrounded by electric motorbikes and parts.
Volvo launched the 240 in 1974; production continued for 19 years until it finally ended in 1993. Over the years, Volvo launched various facelifts and updates. The car in the photos is a post-1986 facelift example, with a modernized front and rear.
Volvo did not officially sell the 240 in China. However, state-owned taxi companies imported the 240 in batches during the 1980s. The first Volvo 240 taxis in China operated in the southern city of Guangzhou.
From Sweden via the United States
In early 1986, the Beijing Oriental Taxi Corporation batch-imported two hundred US-spec Volvo 240 GL sedans from the United States. These cars mainly served at the airport, at large hotels, and in the Beijing embassy districts. The Beijing Oriental Taxi Corporation (北京东方出租汽车) was a local state-owned company owned by the Beijing municipal government. It went out of business in 2007.
The US-spec 240 has Volvo badges with a black background, slightly different rear-light clusters, and a lack of side indicators and headlamp wipers.
Specs
The 240 taxis in Beijing had the classic Volvo 2.3-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine under the hood. The engine’s output was 113 hp and 183 Nm. It had a 172 km/h top speed, it did 0-100 in 12.6 seconds, and it had a fuel consumption of 10.1 liters per 100 kilometers.
The end of the Volvo 240 taxi
Starting in the late 1990s, Beijing taxi companies started to replace foreign-made taxis with locally-made cars. This, sadly, meant the end for the Volvo 240 taxi in the Chinese capital. A locally-made car, like a Volkswagen Santana, was cheaper to buy and much cheaper to run than a batch-imported US-spec 240. Volvo didn’t have a service network in China at the time, so mechanics repaired these cars with whatever parts fit.
The taxi company sold the Volvo 240 taxis to the general public. The insurance stickers on the windshield show that this particular car was road-legal until 2011. That’s a long run!
The interior
The dashboard is indestructible, and it shows. Clean it up and it’s all right. The shop’s owner used the ex-taxi as a storage space for tubing and a bathroom sink. That’s just evil.
Happily, I can still see that it had a beige fabric interior with black door trim.
The shop was part of a large cluster of car modification businesses just to the north of the Beijing Goldenport race track. Sadly, developers demolished the entire area and replaced it with a brand new apartment complex.
The whereabouts of this 240 GL are unknown. Let’s hope it sits somewhere safe in a private collection of a museum.