Hullo! I stumbled across this site while researching a car purchase and I thought I'd ask y'all (yes, I'm in the south United States) a couple of questions regarding a vehicle that I'm interested in. First, some background, and an apology-in-advance. This is going to be a rather long post, but I figure that I'm better off being as detailed as I can. I hope you understand.

I'm a divorced father of four (non-custodial parent). My daily driver, a VW Jetta, has been a great car for me. It has decent performance, lots of space for me (6'1", 250 lbs), great reliability and awesome bang for the buck. I only paid $1,000 (US) for it and it has lasted me three years, with few repairs - which to me is great service. As a daily driver, it's a great car. The only problem comes when I have the kids. It then becomes far too small.

So, with that in mind, I started looking around for a cheap second car that would haul the family around comfortably and would also offer better cargo space than my trusty VW. My main concerns are price, safety, reliability & comfort/roominess.

1. Price - I don't want to spend more than $2,000 (US). I know this sounds silly, but I don't think I'm going to put more than 5k miles p/year on the vehicle for the next 5 years. It's certainly not going to be my daily driver. I'm looking at used MB 300SD's or 420 SEL's for that (although a 740 turbo might work as well). I don't see the point in spending alot of money on a second car.

2. Safety - It's going to be toting my family around in TX - where even 105 year-old women want to drive 4 door diesel 1 ton pickup trucks. Crashworthiness is a HUGE issue.

3. Reliability - A car that doesn't go anywhere might as well be a terrarium filled with hermit crabs. I don't mind working on a car now and again, but I don't want to do it often. I want it to run when I need it.

4. Comfort/Roominess - My children (13, twin 10 year olds & 9) are all threatening to be 6' tall - so I need something roomy. Plus, I have a yellow lab that gets testy if I don't take her with me when I go anywhere. Kinda like my ex-wife, but the lab won't take all my stuff if our relationship goes bad. That's another story though..........I also frequently lug computer components, wood, tools, and other fairly large objects with me, so cargo space is a must.

Having said all that....

I ran across a 1989 240 DL Wagon w/120k miles on it, parked behind a health food store/coffee shop in town. It didn't look as if it had been moved for a while, so I took a look at it. I'm a fair hand with a wrench and I was thinking that I might be able to save money buying something that needs a little work. The body looked good, aside from the clearcoat starting to fail from sitting in the TX sun. The interior looked good aside from some degradation of the plastic in the door panels. The dash isn't cracked. It seemed to be worth looking at. The registration sticker dated back to 1998, which meant that the owner wasn't driving it, and hadn't been for some time. I decided to ask him about it.

He was surprised that I approached him about the car, and said he hadn't thought about selling it. He had bought it used and driven it for about two years, and then parked it when he got a great buy on an RX-7. He said that when he parked the Volvo for the last time it hadn't had anything wrong with it. The AC worked, the tranny shifted fine, the engine ran well, it didn't pull when driving or breaking. He had pulled the battery out of it, and a few times a year he recharges the battery, puts it back in, starts the car and lets it idle for a while. According to him, it's always started up.

He also said that it was the 4th Volvo that he has owned, and he has always been impressed by them.

He offered to sell it for $1,000, which seems reasonable to me. Seeing as the keys & the maintenance records were at his house, I couldn't get into the car to look at it more closely. We set a date & time next week when I am to show back up to start the car and check it out. Which brings me to my questions.....

I know that Volvo prides itself on producing one of the safest cars on the road, but how reliable are these cars? What kinds of things go wrong with them? Is it reasonable to expect that this car will meet all of my requirements? Providing the car runs & drives well, is $1,000 a reasonable price for it? Are there any known problems with 240's that I should watch out for when looking at the car?

I would sure appreciate any input y'all might be willing to give me.

Thank you - and, again, sorry 'bout the length of this post.