1980 343GL Lowrider

Hallo, i'm from Sweden and this is my project.

I had a 1985 360GLT as my first 300 which made me fall in love with these magnificent little things, then i had a 1986 340DL.

Always wanted a real 343 and i found this for sale, sold my Golf in a day and went to pick it up 440km away in the middle of winter with no heat, no exhaust and no windshield wipers. Really had to have it.

It's a 1980 343GL manual with 100k Km and it's practically rust-free besides the front fenders and some light rust in the edges of the outside.

My plans are building a lowrider speakerbox. Stock sucks, but i'll save everything i take off and it will be possible to return to stock even though that most likely won't happen, this is a keeper. I won't go into too much detail so you'll have to wait and see, unfortunately it might take a while, but i'll update as much as possible.











:nono:

Nice! So the V90 in the front is your daily driver?

Thanks. Nah that's just another brown Volvo i found at the store i had to park next to

This is actually my daily driver at the moment, i wasn't supposed to drive it during winter but i haven't been able to afford a 360 or 245 which are the two cars i've considered for a winter beater, for the summer i'd like an automatic 480

300's are great reliable cars and work well as dailys, i'm not to bothered with the slowness and no power steering, i've had worse cars for dailys lol.

This was probably the worst one since i'd run over the front bumper all the time lol

Wow, 343 L. How many of these in Sweden?

It's a GL Erik but also very rare.

Yes the L is extremely rare understandingly, but most you see are DL of course.
Probably because the differences are badges and what else? Can't see anything that tells DL and GL apart lol.

I've seen one 343DL (pre facelift) in real life i can remember and that was in a junkyard sadly, there are a few in Sweden but nobody has liked them for 30 years for no apparent reason, they are great cars, but i can't complain about a rare car for no money. When bought new the 343's were often vario since it was mostly older people who bought it. I wouldn't complain about a vario but nice to have an unusual car.

I'll probably upset some of you but i paid 200eu for this, yes you probably understand why i was screaming all the way there and home.

Sorry about the off-topic pic, here are pics of my old 300's to compensate.

By the way, i love Holland and might even move there!

This is the 360GLT which got me into 300's, it was a piece of shit with rust everywhere including the c-pillars, but it was and still is the best winter beater i ever had, my friend got a ride in it and got one for himself after that. 2.5" exhaust, kevlar bucket seats from Erwin Weber's Mitsubishi Galant VR4 that won the german rally in 1992 and a deep steering wheel on a 50mm spacer was all that was needed to throw snow and have fun.



And the 340DL, i had a BMW 740iA that i didn't need for winter, it had 18's and i needed money instead of buying winter tires (400nm V8 on summer tires no thanks) so i set it up for sale with possible trades for 300's, and this came up, i got 900eu and this thing which was actually too nice to drive during winter. It still had some of the blue plastic on the stainless around the windows, unbelievable.

The extras on the GL version in relation to the DL from 1980 are:

- Heated seats
- Tinted glass
- Halogen headlights
- Metallic paint

The seat heating is thermostatically controlled.
It should go on below 14 degrees.
He switches off at 22 degrees.
Usually they are broken and wrinkle the mats under the upholstery.

But the upholstery is easy to release, to repair it


From the DL version you had:

- Interval on the wipers.
- Dimmable interior mirror
- Lighter
- Clock
- Chrome trimming around the windows
- Bump strips on the doors.
- Luxurious upholstery

The L version does not have any of these.

Thank you for the info! Never knew that, always fun to learn new things to torment my friends with lol.

I knew about the missing trim on the L since it's obvious, also it's missing the plastic chrome trim on the door cards i think, that must have saved a fortune lol

Right now i have an L spec single wiper interval since i had to jerry rig a separate button to get through inspection, my wiper stalk is kapot.

Wow, the blue sedan is great!
Keep it that way and do whatever you want with the others!
I'd love to see what you make of the first car shown, the 343.
Do you have any examples?


bytheway, nice nickname

Yes, we know; Holland is great ..... but the 343 is also very great....This color is rarely found in Holland.