|
My first thought is to be sure that teh sedan will fill al of your needs, since you were looking at a wagon first. Of our 11 Volvos so far, only one has been a sedan, and I just can't see giving up teh huge versatility of the Volvo version of a wagon. If it was a Taurus, etc, then I think the wagon gives up a lot in exchange for the wagon advantages, but Volvo's just about combine it all in the "sportwagons", particularly the turbo wagons with 5 speeds. With all of the various issues and trouble trends seen on these boards, I really don't get the impression that the Turbo's are adding much of anything to the maintenance costs, and they certainly haave a high payback when it comes to added driving fun if you like that (otherwise the base engines are perfectly adequate performers, just not exciting). General advice with Volvos and all complex expensive cars is to avoid cars without maintenance records, since so much of the early preventive maintenance only shows the payback as the cars age. However, as a 2000 model and only 67k, skimping on things like brake fluid flush, tranny flusn, etc. probably haven't yet hurt the car much, and a good Volvo mechanic can give you a good reading on whether required basics have been adequately done. One of my sons spent some time working at a car dealership while in college, and he said that almost all of the cars that the dealership bought from factory lease-end auctions needed significantly more mechanical rehab work than private trade-ins, to the tune of 1500-2000 per car he thought. For a while, he said the dealer was actually loosing money on teh used car division because they were buying too many off-lease cars for inventory (This was a Ford franchise, if I remember - but only a couple of years ago). Anyway, just some thoughts,
Mike
--
Mike Sullivan ('91 745 (171k), '93 965 (147k), '95 855T (60k), '98 V70XC (78k). Past Volvo's: '85 744 (256k), '86 245 (165k), '86 245 (195k), '88 745 (208k).
|
