Scary experience

Not too sure on this one.

Where have all the door lights gone compairing my '96 V70 T5 to my 02 V70 D5, the quality of switchgear as well; a little 'cost down' has taken place I think.

Also there are many new Ford products waiting in the wings. The P1800Es type - a smaller retro version. XC90 V8!! (USA Only) New S80, and later this year new V70.

Yours
strapped into his finance deal & is in neg equity due to the mileage.ANJ

[foggyjames]

> a little 'cost down' has taken place I think.

I think this happens generation-on-generation.
Despite being much better designed, the materials quality in our V40 are not a patch on the 360 (its spiritual predecessor by two generations). Likewise the 800 / 70 series are lacking some of the quality fit and finish of the 900 series. In both cases superior design outweight the lack of 'quality'...but I know what you mean!

>
>XC90 V8!! (USA Only)

The word is we'll get this as soon as they've figured out how to make it fit with RHD (same problem as with 240 and 360 turbos).

>strapped into his finance deal & is in neg equity due to the
>mileage.

Tempt me into that shiny new car why don't you :) Mine is worth £300 at the most...and unlike our V40, it doesn't break down! Then again its a noisy heap...such is life :)

cheers

James

Hi, Not a pleasant experience you've had. About 10 months ago i had an accident in my S80. Another car came rushing into the side of me and spun me around. When i hit the brake pedal the whole lot hit the floor with no appreciable braking taking place. Bizarley 30 mins later the brakes were working perfectly. This was never looked into as the car was written off, and was never driven again but certainly suggests there may be a problem. With regards to the slow responding accelrator my replacement S80 was similar when i purchased it, many people have written on the forum about it being electronic, or an ecu based problem. My car never gave any warning lights to say so, or error codes, but after replaceing the MAF sensor, throttle response is back to normal and not as sluggish as you would think in a diesel, also there is a noticeable increase in power, so it appears these sensors degrade over time prior to complete failure and at that time the dash lights up.

Yours Jason

Update: well there is still no news. We still have the fleet car (which has much better pickup and mpg) and our parts are still in a lab in Sweden.

Next week it will be one year exactly since the first incident!

[Alpha206]

Ah, someone else who misses the door lights (and even the reflective stickers!) I asked Volvo what had happened to them and their reply was that the hazard flashers had removed the need for them!


"Remember when it used to take three-and-a-half hours to cross the Atlantic?"

[foggyjames]

Hazard flashers? In what way do those replace door marker lights?! I mean I think they're a (unnecessary?) luxury, but I certainly can't see how hazard lights are an equal replacement! I smell a cost saving...

cheers

James

James sorry but I've got to responsd to this one - Tempt you into that shiny new car! Yours is worth £300. Its not the point! During my travels throughout Europe for my business I need a reliable car The last bill for a full servive & other items was £1719.20 Sorry but its still a pile of kryptonite although it cost the best part of £28000 - its expensive kryptonite (cockney slang)
Yep I'm stuck with it with all its cost downs and unreliability. I had an S60 that was not much better Graeme Catnatch reminded me of this one as he has responded to a comment of mine earlier in this forum. I was previously on here as Alex Jennings with a pile of krypotonie in the form of a Scarab Green S60TS - You are right I am a dick head for buying another Volvo.

[foggyjames]

I'm not entirely sure I get you....but if this is what you mean...an old car doesn't have to mean an unreliable car. I certainly can't afford to have an unreliable car! We've had our 360 for 13 years and 100k miles (130k total), and it's never suffered a breakdown. I probably know first hand of about 10 360s, and I've never heard of a breakdown - and we're talking about cars which are at best 15 years old. Some of these cars have 250k+.

Mine is now in need of a bit of work that my folks didn't want to do because of it's age (carb rebuild for a start), but I think nothing of jumping in it, doing 500 miles in a day, and getting out at the end of it feeling fresh, and often having achieved 40-50mpg. The thought that I might not get there doesn't even cross my mind. The most expensive annual maintainance cost we've ever incurred is ~£1k, and the average is more like £300. It'll stay with the traffic in the outside lane of the M1 all day, and still return 30mpg average at 100.

All this in a package which - if you try hard enough - can be got for free. Of course the big downside is 'respectability'...a rusty POS 300 hardly casts the right image, especially in a business environment. Of course there are ways to remedy that...and we could be talking about any number of cars.

My housemates girlfriend bought a brand new Polo last year, on the basis that anything used would be unreliable. Perhaps the car-owners of the house don't set the best example (Metro, and I'm always intentionally breaking my car...)...but the finance payments are fairly crippling, and funnily enough my 17 year old car still starts every time, goes fairly well, stops, and gets decent MPG...and it's worth about the same as one of her monthly payments!!!

And it's not like my car is a total wreck...
http://www.foggyjames.co.uk/inbox/steve/DSCF0027.jpg

The best bit is she's planning to sell it at 3 years old - after the worst of the depriciation, and when she's got little on the benefit of the VW build quality!

Really, I'd love to be convinced to buy a new car, but 20k-30k is a lot to drop on an item which will only lose value - spectacularly so - and the reliability card certainly won't work! Now if I were to spend 30k on an Aston... :)

I accept that my odd-ball interest in old Volvos isn't too practical, but in my humble opinion, the way to buy a newish Volvo privately is to buy an ex-fleet car at about 3 years old, so a finance company have borne the brunt of the depriciation, the car has probably proven reliable (most fleets will take 'bad' cars out of circulation, and will spare no expense on maintainance), and (being a Volvo) will barely be run in!

cheers

James