The Volvo 242 is the ultimate sensible pencil-pusher accountant's daily driver. With a body more square than Spongebob Squarepants and a sensibly Swedish build quality that makes almost all of its contemporaries feel lacking in the engineering department, the 242 is a car for a different type of car enthusiast than your typical run-of-the-mill petrolhead. But that doesn't mean the 242 is incapable of letting its hair down. In some cases, it serves as a worthy foundation of a badass restomod.
Want proof positive? Look no further than the uber-skilled Swedish tuner Sören Nordin. With a wide array of tuning experience on everything from Porsches, Fords, Mitsubishis, Mazdas, BMWs, Alfa Romeos, and, of course, Volvos, there's not many tuning platforms that Sören hasn't wrenched on in his time on Instagram. But even by his own standards, what Sören managed to accomplish with this Volvo 242 is nothing short of stunning.
From the factory, the Volvo 200-series, built from 1974 to 1997 in Europe, hit showroom floors with a plethora of underpowered but no-doubt dependable petrol and diesel four and six-cylinder engines that may have gotten you to work and back, just very slowly. These are not the same qualities you can say about the four-liter BMW S65B40 V8 from an E92 M3 with which Sören replaced the original hardware. The same engine powered the iconic retro-styled Weismann MF4-S sports coupe and jetted 413 horsepower and 295 lb-ft (440 N.m) of torque in this configuration.
Safe to say, Sören didn't keep this engine stock. Quite the opposite, thanks to a Haltech Elite 2500 ECU, chances are good that more ponies are lurking under the hood of this Volvo than the M3 this engine came from. All this power is fed to a seven-speed dual-clutch transition that also came from an E92 M3. With custom-fabricated motor mounts and a tune, it's almost like this car, and this engine was born to meet one day. Thankfully, the rest of the car is just as well sorted.
The rear drive wheels are powered by the same 1031-series Volvo rear end that came with this 240. The stock drivetrain hardware sans-engine still present in this restaurant is so robust that the obligatory Ford nine-inch rear-end swap wasn't entirely necessary. A set of adjustable coilovers from Öhlins at all four corners with Volvo S60R brake rotors up front and 930-series Porsche 911 rotors in the rear make for a drift machine that's the pride of Scandinavia.
Add in a tricked-out interior with Sparco Pro2000 racing bucket seats, a Haltech IC-7 digital speedometer and tachometer, plus an RRS steering wheel with integrated paddle shifters, and Sören Nordin's got the coolest Swedish restomod we've seen in ages on his hands. Cheers to him and his professional dyno tuning business, S Technic AB. Check out his Instagram right here.
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