I’m at the point where I may need to buy a car, and a Volvo wagon is the way I want to go. I want to spend less than $3k, and there are a lot of cars below that price on my local craigslist.
Aside from scraping the Deadhead stickers off the rear window, what do I have to know?
Are there particular model years I should avoid?
Are there model years with a deep pool of parts or a not deep pool of parts?
What parts commonly fail, and are they expensive to repair/replace?
Are parts from the sedans commonly interchangeable with the wagons?
I saw this one on my local craigslist. It would be a drive to get to it, but the price is low. Also, the fact that the owner has detailed what has been done, says he has service records, and is explicit about at least one fault is encouraging.
“One owner 170k PS,AC,PW,PWR Seats, Power Mirrors, Leather, Power Sun Roof, Alloy Wheels, Pull down Cargo separator, New Uniroyal tires all around (less than 100 miles). Newly installed timing chain (800 miles), recent brake job, all belts recently changed, All service records available. Needs valve job…otherwise excellent mechanical condition. Body has no rust, no major dents.”
You do realize a valve job is basically a partial engine rebuild, right? That’s not just a minor flaw there.
Not to be discouraging, but buying a sub $3000 Volvo should probably be seen as a down payment. They are not cheap cars to run new, and at this age expect expensive problems.
What is it about Volvos that appeals to you? If it’s just the funky Swedishness, I’d suggest that you might consider looking at an 80’s 240. The old bricks are solid fairly simple cars and Volvo sold zillions of them, so there’s still good parts support. The same can’t be said of Volvo’s subsequent cars. They’re a bit of a “cult” car now, so you can probably pick up a late 90’s/early 2000’s post-brick era Volvo for less, but the brick is going to be a lot easier to own.
That was my first car, a black '91 240, drove it for almost 15 years. They’re great little cars, built like a tank, and practically impossible to kill.
There are millions of them out there, but are actually surprisingly difficult to find one for sale. Because I had fond memories of the one I used to have I looked for one when I was recently in the market for a car and there just aren’t that many for sale. People tend to hold onto them; I looked on Autotrader just now and there are currently only 29 listed across the entire country. Cars.com only had 18.
I had three 240s and my kids had two more. (We followed that with a couple of '05 models, one sold for reasons unrelated to the vehicle and one still a daily driver.) As long as you accept that, repair by repair, Volvos can be expensive, they are great cars with tremendous longevity. A good, late 240 wagon will probably serve you well, but choose carefully and pay for a professional inspection before you commit. That $50-100 could save you from disaster.
Good thread-I have never undertood the claim (for Volvos) of tremendous longevity. Yes, you can keep ANY car going forever-if you are prepared to dump money into it. As far as the design of Volvos, they appear (to me) to be rather simple, spartan vehicles. They also seem to be well protected against rust. But do people really drive them for 250,000+ miles? I can believe that-as long as most of them are highway miles. Take Irv Gordon’s Volvo (P1800 model)-it’s done, what-several million miles? But Irv has replaced engines, transmissions, many other parts. The bother Swedish car (SAAB) doesn’t seem to have the same reputation at all-many SAAB owners give up on their cars (there are always plenty of used ones for sale)-and mechanics tell me that an old SAAB can really empty your wallet-fast!
WAG - Perhaps the reputation is due to people who would buy Volvos are, like Mr. Gordon, people who have a tendency to take care of their cars and drive them for a long time.
Part of it is that the European brands used to be able to get away with selling cars that cost more because they were overbuilt, not because they had more bells and whistles and such. Then those darn Japanese came along and started making cars that were cheap AND well-built, and that particular market niche evaporated. Even though pretty much all the Euro brands still have simple well-built cars in their home markets, in the US only their luxury and sports cars are still competitive.
My son owns one right now. IIRC it’s a late 90s model. He’s had to do a number of repairs, but none of them major. They seem to be built solid, but some parts can be expensive. He currently has a problem with the wiring to the tail lights on one side. It looks like it will be difficult to access the wiring without disassembling the rear door so his only fix may be to string another wire somewhere. He also had to disable the overdrive for some reason, apparently a common problem, but not one that makes the car useless. These things line up with what I’ve heard from others.
I drove a Volvo 240 wagon and loved it. Then a couple sensors died in the fuel line and the cost to replace them would have been $700. I drove it with the sensors out of whack for a few more years, then sold it to buy a Ford Escort wagon that got twice the gas mileage.
My father once told me that there’s few things more expensive than a $1K used car. That was a long time ago so the price might have gone up to $3K by now.
If the timing chain needed to be replaced because it slipped or broke AND it’s an interference engine, it’s possible that the valves hit the tops of the pistons. In that case “needs a valve job” would be an understatement.
I owned an 1978 Volvo 244 DL back in 1990. It was a great car.
GJ: I did not know that a valve job is a major undertaking. As to why a Volvo, I was under the impression that Volvos were durable and easy to service, but perhaps that’s based on the rep of the earlier models. They also have the crumple zones, which are supposed to protect you in a crash. I would prefer a wagon to haul stuff occasionally. Current situation demands a used car.
Wisdom among locals is that the 240s are the cheapest to own and maintain, and they earn you the most street cred among the crunchers. Service will still be expensive, but 240s are less dependent on electronics, and there’s a growing inventory of cheap parts from older cars that are being taken out of service. They’re a large community of enthusiasts, specialty parts dealers, Volvo-only junkyards, and so on.
I don’t own a Volvo, but I considered buying one. It seemed like every year of the S-series models had some kind of fatal flaw; bad transmissions one year, bad timing belts another year.
They’re also sort of coasting on reputation with safety. Volvo was the first car company to take safety seriously and back during the 70’s and 80’s they were drasticly safer than anything else on the road, let alone the relatively small cars they were for the time. More modern Volvos are still extremely safe, but the other companies have largely caught up and they’re not significantly safer than anything else in their now more upscale range.
With cheaper cars, finding a well cared for individual specimen is generally more important than fretting too much over make and model.
Buying a used Volvo wagon was one of the stupidest things my wife and I have ever done. We bought it at a used-car dealership, and as soon as we took possession, serious things began to go wrong with it. Within a month the odometer had broken, among other things, so at that point we said to hell with it and bought a new car. I don’t remember the model, though 240 sounds right. It looked very much like a hearse, particularly with its dark-gray paint job and smoked windows. A mournful car, if there ever was one.
It was really my first car, as others have mentioned. A silver 1993 240 wagon.
Problem is, it had a stubborn-as-hell check engine light and would occasionally have issues with starting. Last I heard, she was having some weird issue with the battery. It also freaked me out that it only had one airbag.
She wasn’t a horrible car, my Volvy, but now I’ve got a nice Golfball (read: Volkswagen Golf) that gets around 43 miles to the gallon instead of Volvy’s 23. Just my two cents.
This ad makes no sense. I can think of no Volvo wagon that had a timing chain until the 2008 model year. Until then they all had timing belts unless you went back to pre 1976 when they had timing gears.
OK, I’ll bite. What year is this car, and how much do they want for it?
In general
240s are bullet proof. Built from 1975-1993. You can’t kill them with anything much smaller than a howitzer. By today’s standards, 240s are gas hogs. Expect about 15MPG. From 81-85 they were available with a turbo. Fun to drive. (for a brick)
850 wagons are good, and a lot of fun with a turbo. 960/S90s are the last of the large rear wheel drive wagons.
V70 98-2000 are not the best cars Volvo ever made that is for sure.
V70 2001-2006 are good cars, but very electronics laden. They can be spendy to fix. I own one and in 133,000 miles have had exactly one repair (new bushings for the front end)
If you need more info, feel free to PM me, I spend about 25 years on the Volvo brand, including 15 years working for the factory.
I have a 1990 Volvo 740GL. 205,000 miles on it. I’ve owned it for 6 years. It has been a reliable car, but maintenance and repairs when they come up are far from cheap. Gas mileage sucks! I get about 16mpg in the city and maybe 21 on the freeway. Also, in the last couple of years I’ve had electrical problems. Tail and headlights just seem to stop working. I replace the bulbs and 6 months later they go again. The motor, however, is sound. I want to sell it and get a car that’s better on gas and that suits my personality more, but I can’t afford or want payments. I bought if for 3,500, by the way, and I don’t believe I could sell it for a penny over 1,300 today. Luckily I have a sweet scooter that is so much fun to ride and does up to 60mph when I want to push her for a few minutes. And she gets amazing gas mileage. My guy owns a Honda Fit. I love driving his little car.
Good luck with your search for a Volvo. Here in Eugene, Oregon you can’t go 2 blocks without seeing one. And yes, get ready to scrape off the: “Go Vegan” stickers. ARGH!
I just bought a used Volvo this summer, an S60 sedan from 2004, and it’s been affordable so far, not that I’ve driven it 5,000 miles yet. I also had one, my first car, in the 70s, and boy did that rack up my repair bills–something was wrong with the starting mechanism (a faulty solenoid?) and I could never get fixed right. (Maybe Rick can say if this was common–it was a 164, I think, from 1970.) Fortunately (or not) I wrecked it, and sold it for parts.
But my current Volvo does have small issues that were passed along to me–the moonroof doesn’t work, so I have to pretend it’s just a window to see through or else spend some ungodly amount to get that motor replaced. The seller took another $500 off the selling price to compensate for that, and I don’t really need a moonroof. Stuff like that–if it breaks, sometimes you have to learn to live with it, if you can.
I bought a '94 850 for $4000 and within the first year I’d spent that again on repairs. I had a good, honest mechanic, and he eventually asked me to stop bringing it in because he was tired of figuring out the latest oil leak. I finally agreed when he said those two awful words: head gasket. I did love that car though, the odometer died at 176,000 miles and I drove it for another 6 years.
This ad makes no sense. I can think of no Volvo wagon that had a timing chain until the 2008 model year. Until then they all had timing belts unless you went back to pre 1976 when they had timing gears.