XXX Swedish Cruise-In

The 9^th annual XXX Swedish Car Cruise-In is an all Volvo and Saab car meet organized by VSA, Ingvar Carlson and XXX Root Beer Drive-in. Every year in mid-Winter car owners from around the Pacific northwest and further make the trek to Issaquah, Washington, just East of Seattle. This years event was held on Sunday February 15, 2015. Participants park their cars in the historic XXX Root Beer Drive-in parking lot to show off their hard work while gazing at other’s vehicles.

It’s usually an overall fun and relaxed atmosphere with Volvo geeks and Saab nerds mingling with one another while admiring each other’s rides. This year was no exception. The Volvos and Saabs flocked into the show in such force that the lot soon reached capacity and they were directed to a secondary parking lot or across the street to accommodate the volume. It seems like you needed to get there pretty early to grab one of the prime spots.

The show had a wide variety of Volvos show up with plenty of Swedish metal from the vintage crowd, a herd of P80 cars (850, V70, S70, etc), and a few of the newer vehicles. It would have been nice to see more Volvos made after the turn of the century, but we’ll take what we can get. Perusing through all the spotless 240s, and some of the grungier ones, was a treat within itself; seriously, there were so many 240s there. It’s great to see so many of those still on the road, some with ridiculously low miles.

One purpose of the show was to improve the strength of the Volvo community and make new connections with people that share the same passion. I’m sure there are some folks that only see each other at meets like this and finally have an excuse to catch up over a delicious root beer from XXX.

Several ipd employees attended this year and will hopefully be back for future events. If you have a Volvo or enjoy Swedish cars I highly suggest you check out next year’s Swedish Car Cruise-In. 

Here are some ipd employees' thoughts on the show:

Jared:

                  The turnout seemed to be really good this year; they even had to turn away cars after a while because the lot was all full. There was a great Volvo community presence there for sure. A few favorite cars that I saw were a low-mile red 850R with tan interior, a black 240 with a large turbo and custom engine management system, and a spotless black 242 with a silver interior on gold BBS RS wheels that had super low miles. There was a good vintage presence there as well; I remember seeing a 444, 544, and a nice Duet.

Kayne:

                  Overall, it was a good show, a really fun time. There were a lot of people! I heard it was a really good turnout compared to other years. It was great to see how many 240s were there since I drive a 240 myself. Something I didn’t expect to see was all the really nice Saabs. There were plenty of vintage and more modern Saabs that I don’t see every day. I’ll definitely go back next year!