Good rant! Never thought about it like you did, mostly having blessed the demise of that period of my life working on transverse mounted FWD motors.

One result of that design as used in the 240 confuses lots of non-volvo service people. Someone got it into their head the dual matched-pair belt was for redundancy instead of a way to get some drive friction to the tiny alternator pulley in only 120 degrees of contact. Either way, they crank up on the belts to stem the squeal, but the glazed belts, pulleys, and straining accessory bushings make it worse until they kill the pump bearing. I like that aspect of the 700 design changes if nothing else.

You're right, the pump design is awfully heavy on supporting that bearing way out there. And don't scrape any dirt into the upturned weep hole on the Volvo branded pump either...