Ok folks, the second baby is on the way and the wife wants me to sell the BMW coupe (her car is a Volvo 960) and buy a Volvo Wagon. Ok, fine. The BMW is worth between 4-5k, I'd like to keep my costs under 4k so that I can sink a little money into the 960 as well as sock some away in case something goes wrong with the new acquisition.

I'm seeing, on Auto Trader, a number of 850 Wagons of mid-90's vintage (1995, 1996) for under 4 grand. Some for as little as $3000. Now I understand that some of them are repossessions, which means dodgy title history. That I get. But some are clean title history, which leads me to ask:

Are these cars really just dropping in value that much, or is there something that goes wrong with 850's at 10 years old? I know next to nothing about FWD Volvos, so I need advice... would one of these turn into a maintenance nightmare? I ask because my other alternative, for similar money, is a '94 940 Wagon (Turbo or regular) and I'm thinking that the 740/940 series are uber-cheap to maintain as compared to the 960... how does the 850 stack up?

Thanks in advance!