Volvo 480 Club Europe

Hi all,

Firstly, apologies for not contributing to the forum much recently. Covid, lockdown, life, work etc. just seemed to get in the way. My last real outing in my 480 was Sylvia's Lincolnshire mini meet back in October '19. Since then the 480 has been hiding in the garage. MOT etc in a few weeks though prompted by the Elvington 600 event, so should be having a summer of 480 fun!



Anyway, I'm writing an article on 480's and owners and need some facts, so wondered if you could all assist. My query is a about the lack of spares for the 480 and how this came about. I've heard it said that Ford binned all the 480 spares due to a tax issue when they sold Volvo to Geely in 2010, however I've no facts to back this up.

As the 480 was in production until the mid 90's and I though Volvo had to suport cars for at least 10 years after production stopped (again I've no evidence to support this statement), I'm assuming there was a large pile of spares for the 480 at the time of the Volvo/Geely sale. What happened to them?

If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be grateful.

Thanks, Marc.

Ah, the infamous "obsolete parts" warehouse in Maastricht, which got cleared in 2007. I have tried to verify this story with the actual Volvo people involved and they had a simple explanation. Those were parts that were very slow to sell (though there were some nice parts, like Vesa wheels) so after the obligatory period to stock everything 10 years after Volvo 400 production ended and as a means to cut costs, Ford decided to get rid of them. This was before the sale to Geely in 2010.

Things that REALLY mattered like rear bumper supports, front and rear light clusters and several rare Turbo parts became unobtainium long after the warehouse was cleared and have never been stocked there. Those parts were partly stocked at Volvo dealers, partly in a central Volvo warehouse per country, because people actually needed them. So the reason there are no more parts is just because they have all been used, not because Ford has thrown them away.

Thanks Rob. Great info. as usual.