Victor,

I'm with Roger on this one. I bought a 1989 240 wagon in August 99 from a dealer. While I was out on my test-drive, I pulled into a parking lot and rooted through the glovebox. The owner's manual still had the previous owner's name in it, so I wrote the info down. When I got home I looked the owner up in the online white pages and gave them a call. They told me all about the car, and gave me their mechanic's number. I called the mechanic and got a rundown on what had been done in the last 30,000 miles (car had 137k on it), and he agreed to send me copies of the repair records. This made me feel pretty safe about buying the car. I did have several problems with it when I got it (the blower motor, then the ECU a month later), but it's at 175k now and pretty reliable, if a bit squirrelly at times.

So I just went to Carfax to see what they would say about the car, since I'd been reading all the posts. The 5 "important" records were emissions checks in Conn. at 106k and 130k, and my purchase info. Nothing at all on the original purchase/registration, and nothing about the first 100k miles. And nothing about the auctioning of the car to my dealer and her subsequent use of it for ~15k. Useless.......

I would still check them if I was going to buy a car, but I wouldn't stop there. If you're not familiar with Volvo's, get a Volvo-experienced mechanic to go over it. For instance, on my car the blower motor rattled. I had no idea that Volvo charges $600 to replace a blower motor, and that the part is $200, so I didn't worry about it. The dealer knew, that's why she was selling the car. She had her mechanic spray some lube down in there to try and shut it up long enough to sell. And I didn't know that the ECU's on '89's are defective and just stop working one day. Mine stopped on the very day I sold my previous car, leaving me stranded for four days while a replacement was shipped to my house. This wouldn't stop me from buying an '89, but it would give me something to talk about when I'm haggling with the dealer.

In the end I replaced the blower motor myself, with the help of the fine folks here at the BB, but buying a car and immediately removing the entire dash was a new experience for me..&^)