Potential Volvo V70/V50 purchase. Advice, warnings, etc.

[Dr Bob]

Hi there,

I didn't want to hijack mudpluggers 'Buying a V70 Which one?' thread, but the wife has decided she needs a massive car ()... after a bit of a chat last night we're thinking of reducing the fleet to just the one car that does everything - so it needs to be able to cart two adults and two 18 month olds around in comfort (and potentially in a couple of years be able to handle two boosters and a baby seat), have a boot that will take the double buggy, and a couple of weeks worth of shopping... also needs to be able to tow our (small and light) caravan. We'll probably be doing around 15-18k p.a. so fuel economy is a consideration too.

Now the V70 D5 (or the XC70 D5 - yum) look like the obvious choice, but the problem is that the budget will be really stretched at 15k, and I haven't seen much available for less than that; hence we're (on paper) also considering the V50 (pending seeing one in the metal and if it's going to be capacious enough).

Finally, it needs to be reliable and niggle free - my wife falls out with things at the first let-down, and although I don't mind paying the extra that 'premium' cars cost for servicing, I don't want to be picking up too many bills for rapid wearing consumables, etc.

As an afterthought - does anyone know of any specialists/independants in the Kent area (especially round Canterbury).

So if anyone has any advice, recommendations, warnings, or comments, please pipe-up! Thanks,

CH

[Dr Bob]

Cheers guys,

Having had a rethink last night, I don't think that the V50 is going to be big enough, so we're going to look at V70s at the weekend, maybe book a test drive too... boot space is definately the issue, my Saab 9-3 hatch is probably the smallest that we'd want to go to, and more space would be better(!).

One thing that's come up from the limited amount of reseach I've done so far is this issue with the ETM... does anyone know if it affects the diesel engines - the places I've looked seem to suggest that it's something that affects the petrol and dual fuel engines, but I haven't found anything that specifically mentions the diesel engine.

Cheers, CH

[Dr Bob]

F i F said:

One thing to consider looking at your budget, and please don't dismiss the suggestion out of hand but ...

... and no I'm not going to say what about an MX-5 but...

... and this might be sacrilege on the Volvo forum but...

we have a lot of V70s, and I drive one at some point most weeks, the seats are but I'm getting impressed and so are a lot of our guys with the Skoda Octavia Estates.

OK so they are VRS versions but don't ignore them.

I'm not dismissing anything at the moment - I know my wife won't go for a Skoda (not even the Laurent & Klemin -sp? ), but I may try to convince her some more - especially as there are a couple of decent VW specialists round here for servicing etc, also looking at a Mondeo estate.

The trouble is, with our budget I can't see us getting a great V70, and the biggest concern with two kids is that it doesn't leave us stranded, whereas I've seen 2yr old low mileage Mondeos with everything on 'em from franchise dealers for around 10k.

CH

[Dr Bob]

Hi all,

Thanks for the advice so far... bit more looking around shows that we're not going to get a V70 in budget, so a bit of a change of plan - I'm keeping my Saab and the missus is going to get a bigger car than her focus - the V50 looks like it'll be big enough for her, and affordable.

The annual mileage is likely to be less (initially) - around 8-10k p.a., and the budget has been reduced to about 7.5k - might hang onto the diesel requirement at the moment though because it may in the future become the family car.

Seen one or two in budget with about 50k on the clock, so is there anything to watch out for? I'm guessing that at that mileage things will be run in, but are there any issues with the turbos on these sort of engines?

Thanks, CH

[Dr Bob]

Cheers for the advice so far - but I've just realised that I meant a V40 not a V50! Doh!

CH