No truer words were ever spoken.. Volvos will run forever..at least a long time, if taken care of properly. You should and must expect to take care of some of the maintenance yourself. I just bought a local neglected '96 850 GLT, beautiful car in great shape except for the usual maintenance and wear items - tune-up, brakes, timing belt. The previous owners must have thought that they were taking great care of it. NOT! They failed to do even the basics: check the battery electrolyte, check/change the oil, never trust the "quickie lube" idiots, NEVER! These people failed to get the prescribed 60K and 70K routine maintenance. No timing belt, no tune-up, just rely on that great Volvo reputation. They only got $11,000 on trade-in for a car with 82K miles on it. I spotted the problems right off, and negoiated a very reasonable price.

By all means if you have time, go to a night class to get the basics, these will apply directly to your Volvo. Get the manual, Haynes is probably the best for us casual mechanics, and follow it. Get some good tools that reflect what you feel you can reasonably do yourself. Change your own oil (see words above!). Volvo owners tend to be a weird, obsessive/complusive group that take things into more detail than most car owners. I think the parts do cost more and so do the labor rates, therefore the dealer shop bills will be higher. No better reason to learn to do it yourself.

In 1980 had a 125S station wagon that made me swear to never own another Volvo, a beautiful pig it was. Now I have an '87 240 5 spd that is great and highly reliable and easy to work on. I just bought the 850 and I am wondering if I have just re-entered the dark nether regions again. Yesterday I did a lot of work, today I will do a lot more, but by Sunday I will have a really nice Volvo 850, safe reliable and economical.

Good luck,

TR