MK1's: 343 DL special and 343 16v
Posted: 17 Jun 2007 10:45 am
In England, you don't see them a lot. MK1's. Here in the Netherlands, there are some left...But not many too...I happen to have 2 now.
Here's the '77 343 DL special
It's a car, build for the Swedish market. But the sales weren't that great over there, so it was sold in the Netherlands, to a volvo mechanic. He owned the car till 2005. Look at the headlight wipers, tipical
This is a very early 343. It has the very first brown dash. and even the DAF seats (not in the car right now, needs restauration)
Looks like this:
the first owner did a lot of things to it. Lowered and koni'ed it. Added a lot of toy's to it...I placed other rims, did some rust-restauration, a backspoiler and some other little things.
This is how I bought the car:
The rearscreen cover came of yesterday...I still have it, and goes on again;)
Then the 343 16v...
Still a project, and still very ugly...That's going to change in the future.
I have my 16v engine laying in the shed. And Im waiting to have a little more time and money. So I'll start probably at the end of the summer. When Ive sold my other car (a volvo amazon/p121) The car will get build up as a racer. So nothing more than 2 bucketseats in there, and hopefully a nice rollbar. Then the 16v engine comes in, with a 5spd manual gearbox. Eventually I want to restore the car to a nice and tidy racer. But thats probably going to take a couple of years.
Here's the '77 343 DL special
It's a car, build for the Swedish market. But the sales weren't that great over there, so it was sold in the Netherlands, to a volvo mechanic. He owned the car till 2005. Look at the headlight wipers, tipical
This is a very early 343. It has the very first brown dash. and even the DAF seats (not in the car right now, needs restauration)
Looks like this:
the first owner did a lot of things to it. Lowered and koni'ed it. Added a lot of toy's to it...I placed other rims, did some rust-restauration, a backspoiler and some other little things.
This is how I bought the car:
The rearscreen cover came of yesterday...I still have it, and goes on again;)
Then the 343 16v...
Still a project, and still very ugly...That's going to change in the future.
I have my 16v engine laying in the shed. And Im waiting to have a little more time and money. So I'll start probably at the end of the summer. When Ive sold my other car (a volvo amazon/p121) The car will get build up as a racer. So nothing more than 2 bucketseats in there, and hopefully a nice rollbar. Then the 16v engine comes in, with a 5spd manual gearbox. Eventually I want to restore the car to a nice and tidy racer. But thats probably going to take a couple of years.
I'm fast coming to the conclusion (with all sorts of things) that if you're in doubt, you should go for it, even if it'll be a hassle, etc. Opportunities are not to be missed.