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Mnn, Well I would not be dissuaded by whatever you read on that site. You see it seems that Volvo owners epect more from their cars, and tend to know more about them (and notice when little things go wrong). In my opinion, an american car owner will just hand money over to the garage to fix whatever problem whereas a Volvo owner will come online and complain about it :)
I have owned 4 Volvos now, and I will probably never buy another brand for several reasons;
1. I know enough about Volvos now to do a lot of repairs and maintainence myself and save lots of $$
2. safety - one of my Volvos was totalled by a drunk driver and my boyfriend and I were not hurt at all, that is very valuable to me. In another car there is a good change we would have had leg injuries or worse. I have checked out the independant crash ratings - that rate cars in realistic crash situations, not the insurance ratings which penalize for repair costs... and Volvos are still the safest cars on the road and always have been.
3. Reliability - no they are not perfect and some years/models are worse than others but friends with other cars have way more problems than I do.
A few rules of thumb;
- old RWD Volvos are generally more reliable and easier/cheaper to fix
- maintainence makes the car. If you (or the previous owner) takes good care of your volvo it will last a very long time. Neglect it and it will lead to expensive repairs.
- clean the flame trap every year, check PCV nipples and system
- clean throttle body
- flush coolant every 2 years
- flush transmission fluid every 50k or so
- change oil regularly and use VOlvo brand oil filter
- run the A/C every week even in winter to keep it from corroding
- run the heat in the summer sometimes to keep heater core from corroding
So, buy a Volvo from someone who understands the above, and continue to do these things yourself, and you will have a car that you can expect 300k miles or more from. Good luck!
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