In reply to akylekoz :
Most of those issues were solved with the P2. Although they seem to have made the cosmetic part of the shell out of Reynolds Wrap, you can dent it by leaning on it too hard.
In reply to akylekoz :
Most of those issues were solved with the P2. Although they seem to have made the cosmetic part of the shell out of Reynolds Wrap, you can dent it by leaning on it too hard.
Still good news and makes me want one. It's gonna be the coldest winter for my Colorado diesel and I have no place to plug it in. I'm also doing short 4 mile trips to school and even shorter trips across the street for groceries, not the right vehicle/engine for the job.
In late 2007 we had our noses pressed against the glass of the Volvo showroom, waiting for the 2008 refresh of the V70. We were so disappointed by our test drive of the new platform, we immediately bought the last 2007 XC70 on the new car lot. Still have it. We've managed to rack up a whopping 65,000 miles, so I'm not a good barometer of hard use but it has been as reliable as gravity, roomy, safe, comfortable and a nearly perfect family truckster.
A pre-retirement fleet modernization initiative has us looking for a potential replacement and there isn't much in today's new car lineup that compares.
In reply to bludroptop :
I can't think of anything that could replace the S60R. Everything else feels too cheap inside, and it is amazing how small the car is for how large it is. That is to say, it's a very big car that is remarkably low and short. Most cars anymore are significantly longer and taller. It's shorter than my S40 was!
Parking it next to a new Civic is amusing and depressing, the Civic is longer and taller. Depressing because there's nowhere to go but larger when it comes time to replace it, unless I shell out big money and get an S3 or RS3, and those can't tow 3500lb. But amusing because I have a car that is smaller than a Type R and makes as much or more power (depending on whose dyno numbers you want to cherry pick) and isn't limited to front wheel drive...
So 04-07 is the sweet spot on these? I've been mulling selling my C900 and getting an XC70 for a bit more dirt and snow capability. Casual searching suggests they are common around here, and not terribly expensive.
Another observation is that these seem to depreciate pretty hard and haven't had as much of a COVID cost surge as other used cars, even within the same used car price range. As an example, comparable Toyota and Honda models (cars and SUVs) have had prices surge about 30% from pre-pandemic levels, and these seem to have had maybe a 10-15% bump (at most). So my view is that they're now very affordable, relative to some of their competitors.
I think there aren't a ton of people shopping for an older used Volvo, the owner profile I've observed seems to be folks who buy them new and trade them in every three years, or buy them new and hold on forever. The demographic of folks looking to buy a 10-20 year old used Volvos seems more limited, and I think that keeps the prices in check.
I don't have any crazy spreadsheets to back all of this up, but I've been stalking these Volvos ever since Woody picked up his 850R wagon. I've wasted more hours than I'd like to admit window shopping for these on FB Marketplace and CL.
In reply to 02Pilot :
Yes, that's my understanding, particularly for the XCs. The transmission valve body issues were sorted by '03 for P2s in general, then in '04 the XC70 got the more sophisticated new generation Haldex AWD.
In reply to pointofdeparture :
All Aisin transmissions have valve body issues. Mind you the AW55 was used in many, many different cars ranging from GM to SAAB to Nissan and you don't hear "OMG valvebody" from Maxima or Torrent owners. I figure Volvo owners play for keeps, Nissan and GM owners throw vehicles away often.
Values are weird. Wagons always command a huge premium, and part of the reason I bought an R was because they were going for half the price of a base AWD S60. Or an AWD S40 for that matter. And I wanted the 6 speed auto (TF80, used in many other things) which doesn't have a 258ft-lb limit, but it does have valve body issues..
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Are the valve body issues maintenance-related, or do they just die no matter what you do? Any particular things to look for on a test drive to tell if it's shot?
In reply to 02Pilot :
The bores in the body itself wear out.
My S40 would have a sleazy 2-3 shift hot, then it would adapt to that, then get a sleazy shift cold until that adapted. No big deal.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to pointofdeparture :
All Aisin transmissions have valve body issues. Mind you the AW55 was used in many, many different cars ranging from GM to SAAB to Nissan and you don't hear "OMG valvebody" from Maxima or Torrent owners. I figure Volvo owners play for keeps, Nissan and GM owners throw vehicles away often.
While this is true, the earlier Volvo AW55s have specific issues that were rectified by about a half-dozen TSBs and a software update that culminated in the B4 servo update kit, and took a while to be implemented in production. You really don't want an AW55 from before 2003 if you have a choice.
In reply to pointofdeparture :
My S40 was a 2002. It had 227k before I gave it to someone, and it had at least 270k, probably a lot more, before a deer killed it out from under the owner after that. I experienced the sleazy shift issue maybe a half dozen times, only after doing something like towing a trailer at 80+mph for an hour or two then pulling off the highway for fuel because the fuel tank in that car was laughably small. I never had a problem otherwise. I still think that the specific programming in that TCM was, by far, the best transmission control system ever. It drove like a manual trans with your left foot and right hand tied behind your back. You didn't NEED a manual mode, you could command downshifts with a quick right ankle flip (just like double-clutching a downshift) and it would hold a gear if you were braking and cornering, or coasting downhill.
My S60R has the "bad" TF80 valve body. You know what happens? If you accelerate hard then snap off the throttle right when the trans controller is about to command an upshift, and the moon is in the correct house and you have an odd number of singles in your wallet, some accumulator gets stuck and it will shift at 100% firmness until you cycle the key. It's happened to me a total of four, maybe five times. Easily avoided by not spooling up the turbo and then snapping off the throttle to make the turbo make a noise like the Star Trek:TOS doors 
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