Someone over at Yahoo Autos put together a gallery of favorite Volvos from every era of the brand, and I'll admit I clicked expecting to skim, nod at the obligatory 240 mention, and move on. Instead I sat there for twenty minutes arguing with a photo of a brick-nosed wagon like it owed me money. In a good way.

Volvo doesn't work like other car brands, is the thing. Nobody writes love letters to a Corolla generation the way people write love letters to a 245 wagon. There's a whole subset of outdoors folks, hikers, climbers, river guides, who basically grew up with a Volvo wagon as the family gear hauler, and the affection runs deep enough that half of them still measure trunk space in "will it swallow a cooler and two packs."

The 240 is the obvious anchor and the piece treats it accordingly. Boxy, slow, famously durable. Every 240 owner I've ever met has a high-mileage story, and I mean the kind of mileage where you stop asking and just nod. My sense has always been that these were the Subaru Outbacks of their era, except tougher and worse on gas.

The P1800 gets its due too, and it's the one Volvo that stops non-car people in their tracks. The one Roger Moore drove in The Saint, the coupe with the shoulder line that still looks right parked next to cars fifty years younger. If Volvo had only ever built that one car, it would still have a fanbase.

Then you get into the 850 T-5R and later the V70R, the sleeper wagons. To my eye that era is when Volvo quietly became the choice for people who wanted fast but refused to look fast. There's a certain type of person, usually wearing wool socks, who considers these peak automotive design. I can't promise yours will humiliate anything at a stoplight, but the reputation alone is half the fun.

The gallery runs the whole timeline, which is the right way to do it. Picking one "best" Volvo misses the point anyway. The modern stuff has its fans too, and I have my own feelings about screens replacing buttons, but that's a rant for another day.

For the road trip crowd reading this site: an older Volvo wagon remains one of the great budget overlanding platforms in my book. Room for camping gear, a roof that happily takes a cargo box, engines with a reputation for going forever. Nick and I have talked crossover ground before and I'll say what I always say, I'd take an older V70 over a lot of newer crossovers for a long trip, no question.

Go look at the gallery and see how many you've ridden in. My count is four, including one whose heater only worked on maximum, which on a January Colorado morning is its own kind of character building.