Edition: U.S. / Global

They Call Him Volvo Bob

Published: November 17, 2002

BOB KARPEL, 57, is a tinkerer and a good Samaritan and an engineering whiz. He also has a deep and desperate passion for cars, which is why he owns 81. Yes, that's right, he owns 81 cars.

These aren't antique cars or fancy cars, they're just regular-guy cars, the kind you leave at the train station all day or lend to a teenager. All of his cars are recycled: Mr. Karpel has not bought a new car since 1968, and he still has that one. In addition, almost all of Mr. Karpel's cars are Volvos, except for ''a gaggle of BMW's, two Mercedes and four Citroen Maseratis,'' he said.

Thus, he's ''Volvo Bob'' to nearly everybody who knows him. The guys at the local repair shops call Mr. Karpel ''Volvo Bob,'' as do his children, his wife, his brother, a cousin in Connecticut, close friends and a former boss.

A modest, gentle man with a graying mustache, Volvo Bob seems more like a favorite uncle or a not-so-famous stand-up comedian than a car nut. But, then, there's the undeniable evidence. Volvo Bob keeps 18 cars at or near his house in Katonah. He stores a few dozen in or around several barns and a storage site in nearby Dutchess County, and the rest at his second home upstate. He also has what he calls ''Volvo graveyards'' in various secret locations.

Mr. Karpel has owned at least 200 to 300 cars, by his own estimate. And it's almost a certainty that right now Mr. Karpel owns more cars than anybody else in Westchester County, including Ralph Lauren, who is known for his fabulous collection.

''Ralph Lauren has a collection of impeccable, classic cars,'' Mr. Karpel noted, though not nearly as many as 81, he guessed. ''I don't believe anyone else is silly enough to own more cars than I do,'' Mr. Karpel said.

Even the personal car collection of the Rockefeller family ''doesn't approach anywhere near 80 cars,'' said Bob Snyder, a family spokesman.

Mr. Karpel has also accumulated 17 New York State vanity license plates, each of which is, of course, attached to a working automobile. He gets a kick out of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles Web site, where he can explore options for future vanity plates.

Volvo Bob already has VOLVOBOB, of course, and CHEVOLVO, because the car is a Volvo with a Corvette engine and a Camaro rear axle. He has V8VOLVO and POPSVOVO and WASAWAGN, for a station wagon that he converted into a pickup truck. Finally, Mr. Karpel has the plain vanilla VOLVO. He said he had been offered $2,000 for the rights to that one by an American executive of the company; he refused.

''I thought he wanted it for commercial reasons, and it's not about the money,'' Mr. Karpel said.

Mr. Karpel said he loves to study ''the evolution of the engine and how it interacts with people's dreams.'' ''Building something that works'' is where the thrill comes in, he said, adding, ''The Volvo is a frumpy-looking car, but it's something safe, reliable and functional.''

He feels especially lucky to have found a wife, his fourth, who is certain that she never plays second fiddle to the cars.

''Bob's cars are delightful, and deliciously excessive in number,'' said Carol Sherwin, 34, his wife of five months. ''Rehabilitating, restoring and recycling cars is part of who he is and how he thinks about the world and about people.''

Mr. Karpel has given away at least 30 cars over the past decade or so. He donated three Volvo station wagons to Meals on Wheels in Poughkeepsie, for example, one to the recreation department in East Fishkill and a few more to the local Y.M.C.A. He also builds and donates cars to transport the aged and the handicapped, many of whom love Volvo trunks because they are big enough to hold a folded wheelchair.

Volvo Bob prefers Volvos, he said, because they ''can go hundreds of thousands of miles without falling apart.'' One of his favorites, a Volvo 240, has 485,000 miles on it. That's about four normal car lifetimes, like a person who lived to be 400 years old.

The only cars Mr. Karpel hates are those ''poorly made, poorly engineered cars that are cheap and fall apart after 50,000 miles.'' He refused to name names because of his job as an appliance tester at Consumer Reports.

Mr. Karpel's judicious blend of practicality and fancy goes with his job, where he has designed testing instruments for 18 years. Mr. Karpel has tested mattresses by inventing a 300-pound roller that went back and forth to simulate people rolling over, he said. The device measured how much the mattress had gone down and not come back. He tested surge protectors by inducing computers to blow up; if they didn't, the protector had worked. He even tested condoms by inflating them, sometimes to about 36 inches in length, until they burst.

A car nut since age 15, Mr. Karpel's initiation into the mystery of cars began when he helped a neighbor fix ''a really beautiful two-door Austin-Healy convertible,'' he said. A year later he bought it for $300. That was the first car he took apart completely and put back together.

Now that he's a grownup, with 81 cars of his own, Mr. Karpel has no complaints.

''I have my health,'' he said, ''I have an extraordinary family, I have a career of which I'm exceedingly proud, and I'm a nut, which makes me happy.''

Photos: Bob Karpel, with his VOLVO license plate, in front of his many cars, and others, top. He owns 81 cars, and by his estimate has owned at least 200 to 300 cars. Known as ''Volvo Bob,'' for his love of Volvos, Mr. Karpel keeps 18 cars at or near his Katonah house, others in barns and a storage site and the rest at his home upstate. (Photographs by Suzy Allman for The New York Times)