My '93 240 Classic wagon originally sold for a little over $23K. Which was a lot of money back in 1993, equivalent to about $35K today.

And for that, you didn't really get a lot of car. The 240 isn't particularly roomy, it was very slow (115 hp motivating 3150 lbs of car through a slushbox trans), and it didn't really have many nice 'modern conveniences'. And while they are durable and easy to work on, they weren't always particularly reliable when new, needing more little fixes (on average) than you'd need in a competing Japanese car. And to top it off, it looked like an antique, barely changed at all from the late 60's.

It took a very special brand of customer to buy such a car, with the charms well insulated from the initial buyer. It's only after 10 years and 150K miles that the value proposition finally starts to shine through, and in most cases the initial buyer has moved on by then.

To sum up, they are far better used old cars than they were new cars. And to make matters worse, they were expensive to buy, so Volvo didn't even make that much money on them.

The 850 was designed to move out of the market niche Volvo inhabited, and it sold at a roughly 3:1 clip over the 240.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)