Hi! I posted a couple weeks ago about buying a 1996 850 turbo wagon, and I thank you all for your replies!

I finally drove this car today. It had not been driven since about January 22, 2016. Three things concerned me:

1. I took it on a stretch of highway, and when I hit about 65 to 70, some hesitation occurred, kind of like a thump, thump, thump kind of thing, then it would smooth out. This happened a few times at that speed, but a little later on the ride, this didn't happen every time.

2. I thought I smelled something burning after the test drive, after it had been idling a bit. I looked under the hood, and on the back part of the left top side of the engine, there was a thin stream of white smoke coming from where I couldn't really see, yet it was at the spot to the right and below where one of the wires is bolted to the top of the engine (it wasn't a wire burning that I could see, I'm just trying to pinpoint position, possibly around cylinder #1?).

3. I took it to an Advance Auto and had codes read, as the Check Engine light was on (and it had been on for the person who has it now, yet she was thinking it was an emissions thing). Codes that came up were as follows:

P1310: misfire in at least one cylinder
P0301: misfire in cylinder 1/TWC damage
P0303: misfire in cylinder 3/TWC damage
P0300: misfire in more than one cylinder

This car hasn't been tuned up since about 77,000 miles (it has 157,000 now). It also needed a transmission at around 100,000 miles, which seems pretty young to have that happen.

Any further thoughts about the car? I'm not feeling so confident, especially about the smoking I saw, which almost looked like a stream of incense burning.

Any insight would be appreciated!

Susan