I have had four volvos. (2) 240s 1 740 and now and 850. The 240 has been the best by far and the 850 the worse by far. I will need a new one soon and am trying to figure out which one to get. Which is the least expensive to maintain? How are the s and v 70s?

I haven't driven 'em all yet. I might someday.

It's noisy, drafty, rusty, and has electrical gremlins but my '65 PV 554 is a hoot to drive. Its a good thing that it has a windsheild or I'd have bugs on my teeth!

And the R - Like someone has in his signature "Fast, cheap, reliable - pick two!"

well 260 bhp....like they say in formula one 'speed costs money - now how fast do you want to go?'

Froim what i can see ALL turbo bricks are that way, the rest oif the package can barily cope with it so it breaks....or goes wrong....

I havea theory that partly its the sheer heat under the bonnet that fries electronics etc....

interestingly my new (non volvo) has a scoop in the bonnet for the intercooler - fan assisted and mounted horrizontally under the bonnnet) and its plain amazing the amount of heat that comes out of there 5 minutes after the engine has stopped - so much so you really notice it as you walk past - and thats from a diesel.

I remember lifting the bonnet on my 940t one night to see the turbo litterally glowing dull red...no issues just a fast run....that cant be good for electronics over time...

I have a 940 turbo as well as a s70 turbo. I love them both but prefer the 940 for my daily driver. The 940 has the old school volvo feel to it and the s70 is feels refined and quiet. Both have been extremely reliable and inexpensive to drive. Although in snow the 940 is absolutley worthless. But the choice I would go for the 940 if you live in a warm climate.

Do yourself a favor and get 4 mounted Blizzaks from Tirerack (www.tirerack.com). With those, I can go anywhere that the AWDS/SUVS are going in any snowstorm with confidence. We have 2 sets here for our two 740 turbo cars.

850 a 5 star car!, closely followed by the 144 delux, then 740/240 (close ru nthing) worst by far 940 (never had a 760 but the reputation aint good!)

The best Volvos ever were the '93-'95 940, either NA or Turbo. I prefer turbo cars.
Little goes wrong with them if marginally maintained. Maintenance is cheap and the last forever.

When my 20 yr old 745T finally loses to rust (still maybe another 10+ yrs?), I'll then replace it with a '95 945T and that will last me many more years.

I work on newer Volvo FWDs/AWDs daily and don't want one, ever.

buy a 945t and get your wallet out, well that was my experience, twas a pleasure to wave bye bye!

" buy a 945t and get your wallet out"

....maybe if you buy one that's been poorly maintained and/or if you don't do your own maintenance. My 20 yr old 745T (basically just an older version of the 945T) is far less costly to own/maintain than the newer FWDs/AWDs that I repair daily.
I also worked in Volvo dealers when RWDs were new (200s/700s/900s) and back then, we never saw problems like we do today with newer Volvos.
The best FWDs have been the 850s (minus the AC Evap issue) and even the '98 FWD X70s havent been too bad (yet costlier for owners in general) but I wouldn't own any '99 on up Volvo or advise one to anyone I know.

I disagree, personal experience says the 945t is the most expensive car i have EVER owened to run and the most unreliable!(had a partial service history and doing almost all my own maintenance) a 850 20 valve produces as much power and the engine is far better (no turbo, less stressed, better power curve etc), that said I would avoid a 850t like the plague, particualrly with the auto box - that simply was never designed for that much power!)

The NA 850 has to rate one of the lowest and easiest ownerships I have ever had.....

also the build quality onthe body/trim of the 850 is unquestionably better (far less rattles/squaks/broken fitments etc)

then again I AM talking about the the belgium built 940's and the swedish built 850's....

by and large the 700's seem to suffer from much the same faults as the 9's, but we never bought a turbo 7 - looked at a few and they all seemed to have engine issue....

hey everyone has their own experience, but as family ours are that the 7's/9's are to be avoided in preference for the 1's/2's or 8's...

Sorry to hear that you had so many costly problems with a 940 but you're also referring to one 940 vs one other 850. I've worked in Volvo dealerships for 21 yrs now and counting so I've worked on all these models daily for a living. Back in the days when RWDs were all that Volvo made and up to the mid '90s, last days of RWDs, we never saw a fraction of the costly problems that we see now. We see more costly problems on 850s and newer models than we ever typically saw on RWDs.
I'm not complaining as all Volvos problems keep us busy and employed.

still not convinced, i think your arguement is a bout modern car design trends...you didnt see any 140's with leaking evapaorator cores...cos they didnt have them.....now ABS failures on 240's...no abs etc...

more toys means more to go wrong...but and its a big but, they also had ahorter maintenance schedules (higher basic running costs) wer less fuel efficient, were less safe etc....also they were probably better maintained...

its swings and round abouts...

i guess back then dealers also hade mechanics that knew what they were doing...now sadly lacking in my experience (try 3 TIMES the torque on an 850 drain plug it should have.....)

and my expereince is based on a mixture of 144/245/744/745/945/850 based cars...

wont argue the 144 in particualr was very well put together and you could fix it with a scredriver and a peice of chewing gum....the 850 is litle more complex than the 940 and very similar to work on IMHO - any way my 940 went for a Mitsi Delica...now theres good basic engineering for you (makes a volvo chasis look like a toy! and the engine makes a b230 look complex!) i can crawl under it from side to side without ramps... - mind you undersealing it takes about 20 hours!

Depressing confirmation of what I assumed would happen when Volvo went to FWD. Strip away all the marketing fluff, and FWD is about building cars more cheaply, with costs deferred until repairs are needed.

It does not take many days of reading BB to hear about lots of people doing self-repair on RWD models. FWD discussions trend more toward "I just paid $xxxx to have yyyy procedure done, was I ripped off?", often as a repeat performance, with these issues revolving around weak peripheral engine parts buried deeply in the cheap-to-manufacture monolithic drive package.

Anyway, if you're a Volvo enthusiast there's a Ford in your future once the supply of authentic Volvo automobiles dries up. Look to Saab for the final depressing outcome.

No one has any prefereces?

I have in my past had a 145 / 242GT / 740 Turbo / 940 and now an S60


I vote for the 940.

I have a 850 and a 240. The 240 is the best VOLVO but I wish I had a honda accord then I wouldn't be buying tires every 20,000 miles, driving without AC, getting only 20 mpg, and holding up drivers behind me.

Is that yours???
Wow!

RWD, of course.

http://www.vcoa.org/irv-o-meter/

I've seen the car and talked to Irv but his car is highly unusual as most 1800s didn't last very long compared to other older models since then. I once had one myself, my first car too but I was always repairing it, sometimes on the side of the road. I kept spare parts and tools with me at all times. When I bought mine, it was a tired old POS but its body looked good and I thought that it was cool, never saw one before and had to have it for a mere $600 then.

If you want to wrench on it yourself, like Dave-the-Volvo-tech said a 940 Turbo, I'd say a late 1995 one, if you can find a nice one.

I was looking for one for my kid for over a year and all the ones I found either looked like goats had been raised inside of them, or they had a bazillion miles on them. That was 4 years ago, too.

I finally bought my wife a new Honda Odyssey and we gave the old Honda Odyssey to the kid. (She's a musician so a van is socially acceptable.)

-BTC

'98 V70 T5 5-speed, 164k mi, front IPD stabilizer bar, rear factory HD bar, Bilstein HD, Volvo strut tower brace and skidplate, e-codes, V-1, Mobil-1 since new

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." -- Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

240 Models, all years hands down. They're bullet-proof, just try to hurt one, I dare you.