Your long read…
“The Send Off’”
by Geoff Buys Cars
This story really begins back in July 2021, when MrsGeoff returned from the shops and announced ‘I’ve just seen a proper Geoff car up there on the street’. Some conversation later and it transpired that a black Volvo V70 was parked not far from out house, adorned with a T-5 badge and a sticker promoting ‘Sam’s T5 Story’ o YouTube. Whilst MrsGeoff unpacked the shopping myself and the two small Geoffs set about researching this Sam’s T5 Story, to understand the full context of the black Volvo estate that sat not three streets away.
Sam is a young lad, restoring a Volvo V70 T5 with help from his dad Tom. It didn’t take many minutes of YouTube video before I became totally convinced by their plight, and threw on my flip flops to go and present an offering. With a type written letter rolled up into a scroll and shoved down the inside of a Geoff mug, I marched off to find the V70. The car was in a pretty sorry state, with lacquer peel affecting every panel and a plethora of dings and dents. Even so, I placed the Geoff mug and letter on the bonnet and snapped a photo of my genius. The letter was an invite for Sam to try my newly built Volvo 850 BTCC tribute, as well as a general ‘hello’ from a fellow YouTube.
Fast forward a few months and Sam did indeed borrow my Volvo 850 BTCC car, until Dad Tom realised the Mot had run out… at which point it was promptly delivered to Hereford Volvo Specialists where it would stay for a number of months!
Although Sam and Tom had invested a lot of time, money and effort into the T5, two things had developed.
1, Sam had seen the potential in a race car replica, and was hankering after a small hatchback rally car and
2, the engine on the T5 had begun to let go.
What started as a hesitation upon acceleration turned out to be a terminal diagnosis for the 2.3 litre Turbo unit, so on a cold day in February I received a text message from Tom… Would I like to buy the T5?
The timing was terrible. I had cars coming out of my eyeballs and as a result my cashflow was non existent. After discussing the T5 with Roger Roger Coffin Dodger and also Hereford Volvo Specialists, I apologised profusely, declined the offer to purchase and then bought the car anyway.
Tom had offered the car to me on a ‘mates rates’ basis, with the proviso that it wasn’t immediately stripped for parts or banger raced. What was required here was a delicate, sensitive send off to give the car the standing ovation that the 198,000 mile engine deserved. I paid Tom some money and then respectfully chopped the roof off.
Well, that’s not quite true, I chopped the roof ‘out’ not ‘off’, as such. I’d always wanted to create a Volvo with a full length rolling ragtop, but never had the chance to test it on a car that was destined fo the scrapheap anyway. With the Practical Classics Restoration Show looming, this was my opportunity! For reasons that I won’t explain now I had been given a last minute four-car stand at the NEC, and my plan was to display the California Edition alongside my BTCC race car replica.
One hour with an angle grinder later and the Volvo was beginning to fulfil my dream – we had a giant hole in the roof and no way of covering it. I asked my friend Lee where I should go to cover the hole, and local company Tarpaulin Repair Services stepped up to the plate. Three hours and one pint of Peroni later and the roof was done! NEC Restoration Show, here we come!
The drive to the show on Thursday was hilarious. I’d decided to take the California over first, as the race car wasn’t quite finished. The rain hammered down, spray filled the entire windscreen but the roof refused to leak significantly. I pulled the now-brown black T5 into hall 3 and was pleasantly surprised by the location – my stand was perfectly situated between the restaurant and the auction, where all the premium cars would be selling during the weekend sale.
By the time the show opened it’s doors on Friday at 9am, both the Volvo V70 T5 California and BTCC Tribute were all set, pointing towards each other with the ink barely dry on the freshly printed information boards. Business cards promoting my channel sat on the windscreens, and the whole set up looked more than professional. The fairy lights around the inside of the roof of the California flickered gently as I photographed the scene, completely unaware that the £6 fairy lights would soon lead to a £6 million bill…
The show progressed as classic car shows tend to, interspersed with a lot of chat, a lot of coffee and many, many pork pies. On Saturday Evening I’d already left the halls when it occurred to me that the fairy lights in the Volvo V70 had been left on. No matter, I thought, that’ll be just fine. The next day I arrived early to check the batteries, and sure enough, the lights were still flickering and the batteries were healthy. This was my first mistake.
What I should have done is touched the battery pack to check for overheating…
Had I read the instructions not he fairy lights I’d have known that one should never cover the entire battery pack with black duct tape, as this could lead to a catastrophic chain of events which culminates in a large fire. Instead I’d taped the battery pack to the inside of the roof, using highly flammable tape to do so. All was well when I checked the lights on Saturday night, but as the evening turned into Sunday, things began to change.
The show opened at 10am on Sunday, and by 1pm I had explained the story of the T5 about a thousand times. Yes, it’s an end of life car, yes the engine needs a rebuild, yes it’ll be scrapped after the show… Over and over again I explained the plight of the car, taking car to emphasise the fact that the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show was the final swan song for this black T5.
Around 3.30pm, just before Claire came over the tannoy to announce there was just half an hour until the show concluded, the inevitable happened…
The fairy lights that I’d forgone to turn off for three days straight, that I’d covered in cheap duct tape against the advice of the instructions, finally sparked into life. The batteries overheated, leading to a very slight melting of the duct take before the highly flammable cheap tape sparked into life. On any normal Volvo, this wouldn’t be a problem, but this was a Volvo V70 California, the roof of which was sealed with highly flammable glue, attached to highly flammable cheap eBay seals, beneath highly flammable spray paint. I had accidentally turned al built Swedish symbol of reliability into a four-wheeled tinder box. It didn’t take long for the spark to turn to flames, which ripped through the roof lining at speed, thanks to the open air ventilation and copious amounts of highly flammable, highly toxic rubber seals. The fire started small and rapidly progressed, and before long the entire roof of the V70 was ablaze.
Before any of the NEC staff could shout ‘fetch a fire extinguisher’ the fuel tank was breached, and the resulting explosion ignited the highly flammable vinyl on the Geoff Buys Cars BTCC replica. That thing leaks oil, water and petrol on a good day, so it wasn’t long before three days worth of leaked petrol ignited beneath the race car. As this petrol caught fire, a small explosion followed, which propelled the race car in an upwards and sidewards direction onto the immaculate Mercedes-Benz SLK directly opposite. The SLK was for sale on a dealer stand, and wouldn’t have normally caused too much of an issue, but in this case the screw in petrol cap beneath the opening petrol flap had gone missing, which meant the Volvo and Mercedes got to know each other pretty quickly and absolutely got on like a house on fire.
The heat from the SLK and Volvo fire was enough to light up the 8 or so other Mercedes-Benz cars that were on the stand, and this in turn gave a good licking to the white picket fence between the Mercedes dealer and the classic car auction. Had the fence been a traditional, wooden picket fence, it would at least have put up somewhat of a fight, but being a classic car show and not Garderners World, the fence was a prop made from foam… the moment the first flames hit it the entire thing exploded into life. On any other day this would have been an easy fire to extinguish, but the picket fence panel that had ignited just happened to be the panel that was closest to a Ford Gran Torino Station Wagon. Now, the reason the owner had submitted the car to auction was his inability to resolve the fact that fuel would constantly leak out of the carburettors after the car had sat for a couple of days. The owner had decided an auction was the safest way to dispose of a car with such a problem, as after three days of sitting static, the content of the fuel tank would be neatly pooled beneath the car. As the foam backed fence panel collapsed under it’s own weight, the top fo the fence caught the shallow end of the Gran Torinoa’s fuel puddle, which quickly ignited the deep end, and the car in it’s entirety followed soon after.
Most of the staff had by this point evacuated, but from the the muster point in the car park we could hear the BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM as each successive fuel tank was breached. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the auction house had required that all owners fill their tanks to the half way point, which in this situation was an absolute guarantee that the car would not only be destroyed, but that the subsequent explosion would then ignite the car next door. Car after car after car exploded, as the sky filled with a thick, black plume of smoke and distant sirens drowned out the sound of burning exotica.
When the fire was finally extinguished, every single vehicle in Hall 3 had been destroyed, along with the roof and one wall. No one was injured, thanks to quick thinking staff at the venue, but there wasn’t a single auction car that made it through.
Amazingly, the insurance companies stumped up and covered the costs, after the investigation found that faulty wiring on a socket within the auction compound had short-circuited beneath the Gran Torino which caused the fire.
A week later I returned to the charred and blackened scene to retrieve what was left of the V70 California… All that remained was a ‘C’ badge and 8 press studs from the roof, along with two wheel bolts and half the tow bar frame. I looked sheepishly at the director of Classic Car Auctions, who was there with a clipboard and some very unhappy looking clients.
Although I’d intended to give the California a good send off, a wild fire wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but fate likes to intervene to do things her own way…