I am currently driving an '89 740 Turbo with 112K miles. It seems I am reaching the 'turning point' of this car: in the past 6 months I've had to replace the steering rack, balljoints & bushings, engine and tranny mounts, muffler and braces. This besides your usual wear and tear repairs such as pads, rotors, tune-up, oil changes, etc. I love the car, so I have been putting in my money more or less without hesitation. However, I have been eyeing the V70 Wagon more and more. It is a stunning vehicle appearance-wise. I have never driven one.

Basically, I'd like to throw out the following question: assuming you could stack up a 740 Turbo against a V70T, how would they compete in terms of:

a) driveability
b) maintenance problems/components known to break

Obviously the V70 would outperform the 740 with regards to speed and safety; I just want to get a handle on whether V70 drivers have been happy with the way their car drives, as well as with the parts Volvo has put into their car - have you been visiting your dealer often for repairs? How do you like the front wheel drive?

Any other advice you could give me? I'd hate shelling out 15K for a '00 V70 and wish I'd kept putting money into my 740.

Thanks!

Bought a new V702.4t in 01. 31k miles later, and no problems (i mean none). Dealer service is expensive, however.

Buddy, I have a '99 V70 and I wish I had a 740 like yours.

It's true that Volvos like your 740 are "barely broken in" at 112k, but I don't know if our V70 will make it to 100k miles. It's just come off warranty after compiling an astounding list of repairs in the first 4 years/40k miles: seal failures, dead AC evaporator, toasted headlight sockets, mystery front end noises... we average a trip to the dealer every 4000 miles.

The car's been a damn invalid since new. It's great to drive when in runs right, but so were British sports cars, and you know how many of THOSE there are around nowadays.

I thought I was buying into the durability/longevity values represented by your 740, but these 1998+ cars are cut from different cloth. I guess you could say that I always wanted a Volvo, but by the time I could afford the car I wanted, it wasn't that car anymore.

I agree with the guy who said you should get the V70 if you really like it, find a deal, and stay away from the AWDs. But keep your 740 for all the days when the V70 is sick.

Go for it.
I had a 945 T , 1995. at 175K it started costing
money and I hated spending time & money on it.

I bought a 1998 V70 T5 to replace it with 20 K miles.

The 945 T felt good - but the V70 T5 feels great.
Of course it has very little miles on it - T5 is much
smoother. overall.

i have a '87 745 w/234k on it . i am keeping it just incase my '98 v70t5m croaks my wallet.i love driving this new car (it has 98k on it) because it is exciting in the fact that it is FAST and handles well.but i know that along with all the amenities and niceties come the expenses if it breaks so.... buy the new one and keep the old one at the ready .

Balladish--your 740 is waaaayyyy too young to be considered old. 112k on the clock is just broken in. I got rid of my 90 740 GL wagon at 188K for a 98V70R AWD. Luv the V70R, hate the complication and "annoying" problems. My ABS/tracs light is now on and that will be a $400 repair with my labor. The 740 is a "peach" to work on and cost of parts is waaaaayy down compared to newer. I would keep the 740 and u should easily get 200K out of it. Save your money and buy a mini for the fun rides! God Bless the usa!!!

We have a 1999 V70 GLT (light pressure turbo). Both my wife and I love the car. Fantastic handling, fast, very, very safe, and about the best seats I'v ever sat on. We recently made a 14 hour trip to Denver. My wife ALWAYS has problems sitting in car seats for anything more than about 2 hours. Well, we were about an hour from Denver and she turns and says "it feels just as great in this seat as it did when we started." Believe me, that is an endorsement.

As you'll find, there have been problems with a number of items in these cars, especially in 97 and 98. They seemed to iron out most of the problems in the later part of 1999 (ours is a later production). We bought ours with 40,000 miles, so had 10,000 mile of factory bumper to bumper. I used that time to find every problem mentioned on the brickboard investigated and checked by me and/or my dealer. They fixed about 5 or 6 items. The fixes are better in that they have been modified to fix the original problem (usually). We have had about 8,000 trouble free miles since (now 52,000 on car).

I do not expect too many other things to occur. Of course it will always be more expensive than a Toyota to maintain, but much more fun to drive with a much better feel to the driving experience.

Would highly recommend a course like we took, and stay away from 97s & 98s, and all 4wd's before 2001.

What course did you take? Sounds intriguing....
--
Mark 2002 V70 10k

I did not mean an actual taught course, I meant the course of action I described in my post.

Do you do all your own work? If so, you will not be happy with a newer Volvo. Many of the repairs require getting fault code information from the computer via a machine that costs $50,000 and only dealers have. That means that owners and independent mechanics are limited in what they can do, just because Volvo is withholding the information. All modern cars have computers, but not all manufacturers make it difficult to get the fault codes out of the computers.

Much of your decision will come down to whether you just want to change cars. It is not going to cost you $15,000 to keep your 740 going, but if you want to have a newer car, that's also part of the equation.

The one thing I'd add is that I've seen plenty of posts here indicating that the V70 had a few problems, especially electrical ones, in its earlier model years. From what I can tell most of those problems were cleared up by 2001 or 2002, although of course a Volvo will always been more expensive to maintain than a Toyota. I did a lot of reading around before taking the plunge into a 2002 V70. I haven't regretted it for a moment--I absolutely love the car, and there has only been one little problem, a brake pedal sensor failure that was covered under warranty and would have been a cheap repair anyway. But the car is still quite new, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Good luck!
--
Mark 2002 V70 10k

Plenty of'98 and newer volvo wagons for less than $10k.
I would definetly go for the light turbowagon(GLT), plenty of power and a great looking sporty wagon.
Make sure there is maintenance records and have the car checked by a certified volvo tech.
--
'88 240, '92 740, '98 v70 GLT John in Tampa Bay

We have a 89 240 Wagon with 180K miles on it and 2 months ago we added a 99 V70
with 59K miles. Except for the dealer being a jerk, we love the car. Should have made the change long ago. The V70 is fun to drive and the wife and I fight over who gets to drive it. The only regret is that we have a non turbo engine. Would have liked a lp turbo but couldn't find one that we liked. Will have to wait and see about maintenance. We WILL NOT return to the dealer where we bought the car, but I plan on doing most of the upkeep anyway and we will just have to find another shop as a backup. To sum it up, I am thinking about selling the 240 and buying another 70 series wagon or sedan!

Cheers!