Volvo V70 - 97-99

In the USA, the '98 model year was the first for the V70.

They were still called 850s in '97. The '95-'97 850s were the best of the 850s.

When it was redesigned (cost reduced) in '98 they had problems with some of the changes. They had this sorted out by the '99 model year and the '99 and '00 were among the most reliable Volvos ever made. Avoid the'98.

In the UK the V70 was available from early 1997.

I have a 1989 740 GL Estate and a Feb 97 V70 2.5 (non turbo). A few years ago I went through the service records to see how much I had spent on NON service repairs to each of the two cars. At that time the 740 had 115k miles on the clock and the V70 60k. I was amazed to find that I had spent roughly twice the sum on the V70 as I had on the 740 and in half the time period.

Andy

I'm not surprised. Our '96 850 has been much less robust than was the '92 240 we also owned. In fact, I sold the '92 to a friend and he has it up to almost 300,000 miles now with the only big repair being a recent new automatic transmission.

The repair on the 850 which really frosted me was being charged almost $600 to repair a degraded rubber hose at the top of the fuel tank. It seems that Volvo used a cheap grade of rubber for many of the fuel and vac. hoses. I've also had to replace all of the little rubber elbows under the hood used on various vac. lines as they just self-destructed. This is a non-turbo manual transmission vehicle, so the under hood temperatures should be much lower than on the turbo-charged automatic transmission cars.

Volvo seems to have been doing lots of cost-cutting over recent years.

John

I don't think it should really be a surprise that newer cars cost more in maintenance than older cars. Think about what the average newer car has in it:

Computers to control almost all major functions Power everything Sensitive emissions controls More environmentally friendly liquids Much lower tolerances for almost all systems

I expect way more out of my 1999 S70 than I did out of my 1992 VW. With more features and higher expectations come higher repair costs.

My $.02

Jordan.