I didn't start this thread as an anti-china thread. Frankly I have significant college coursework and a personal interest in Chinese culture and history.

My main beef is the nightmarish lack of quality control over there bleeding into what little support we had for older Volvos. I should point how many threads in here have talked about how poor the quality of parts have been in recent years - how many cheap junk parts have been arriving in OEM boxes.

Put that in the context of a country/society that hasn't valued the lives of its own people and has a nightmarish record for things we naively call "Human Rights" (but are really concepts most modern Americans can't really understand - like mass starvation, cultural genocide, mass political oppression and murder, and the execution of children (until 1994) and the mentally ill (which happened today 12/29/2009).

Don't forget lead paint on children's toys (which Sweden outlawed back in the 1920s and has been illegal in the USA since the 1970s) and most recently construction drywall used in "new" American houses with so much sulfide in it it actually rots a brand new house from the inside out. Like it or not, those are the people who will now own Volvo.

There is a lot of "blame" to go around - the almighty dollar and all that. No need to really blame "China."

Think about this. Is that what the name Volvo is going to mean now? Sure our 240s should run another 10-20 years, but then what? Move on to something else and cease to care.

Ask yourself- do you drive a 240 because it is cheap, or do you keep your (at-best) 17-year old 240 going because the name Volvo meant something more than a throw-away car? When you got your first one, did you buy that Volvo because you appreciate quality and a vehicle not planned to be obsolete in 5-10 years? If you did, they you must have believed that a Volvo was something more than an more expensive foreign car and you've got to feel some pang of loss now.

If you don't, you ought to take that 240 out to the junkyard and go buy a Kia.