Volvo V50 | Shed of the Week

This V50 isn't quite perfect - a way from it, in fact - but then it is also just £450...

What's your immediate reaction when you see a suspiciously cheap motor? Is it suspicion?

When Shed first spotted this V50 estate, it was up at offers on £400. An hour or so later it appeared that either the seller has had a word with himself or a mate has told him that it was too cheap, hence the new price of £450. At these prices, a vendor is obviously keen to get rid, so it seems a shame to potentially kibosh a sale for the sake of fifty quid. Especially when potential buyers already need to be somewhat easy to please, given that this car has a big ding on the rear three-quarter panel and the ignition switch needs fixing.

Ah yes, the ignition switch. Seeing the word 'hotwire' in a car ad is never ideal, but in this case that doesn't necessarily mean that someone has already hotwired this one in the process of, for example, stealing it. V50s (and S40s) up to around 2007 are well known for going wrong in the ignition switch department. Just browser up 'Volvo V50 ignition switch problem' and a bunch of YouTube videos will spring up to tell you all about it. You turn the key and it springs back in the approved manner but the bit that's supposed to happen in the middle of that process, the engine start bit, doesn't happen. Or you can't un-ignite the ignition, draining the battery and most likely frying the coils. Or, if you hold the key against the resistance, the starter will eventually wake up, but it can take a good few seconds.

Whatever, duff V50 ignition switch modules are most definitely a thing. In 2006 there was a five-month backlog on them. Some say it's a wiring corrosion issue, others that it's mystical payback by the Scandinavian god-king Thor in revenge for Hollywood making money out of his name without his permission. Happily, other YT tube videos will not only tell you that it is fixable, they'll actually show you how to fix it. And it's not that hard or expensive. You won't need to have watched loads of Vin Diesel movies explaining how to hotwire a car in two seconds with a rolled-up ten dollar bill and a slice of pepperoni.

To prove it, here's a Danish bloke with a very reassuring vlogging style fixing his V50's ignition switch, basically by removing most of the dashboard with nothing more than a T25 screwdriver, a butter knife (seriously) and a gung-ho attitude. It's recommended viewing even if you don't have a V50.

It's no longer 2006, so used switch modules are now plentiful on eBay for between £30 and £60. Alternatively you could pay £160 for a new one. Even if you pay full whack for the part and £0 for the labour thanks to our nice Danish chum, you'll still be coming in at around £600 all in, which is pretty cheap for a 2006 V50 diesel estate with 124,000 miles on the clock. Plus, with luck, you might get it through the upcoming MOT for not much more than the cost of the test because last year's one showed no issues other than a wearing rear brake pad and a busted numberplate light.

Then you would have yourself a cheap and handy shed. These V50s are solid, stylish, and decent driving cars. They're economical on long runs too thanks to 38mph per thousand revs in top. In an attempt to pinch some 3 Series business, Volvo claimed on the 2003 launch that V50s were perfect for 'young, dynamic and demanding families', but that was only true if those demands didn't include the ability to carry lots of luggage. That was the V70's role. In its defence, you could fold the V50's front passenger seat down flat along with the back seats, but if there was an award for the world's thinnest and most useless door pockets the V50 would have breezed it. Shed used to have one of these V50s and he considered himself fortunate that his gnarly old fingers wouldn't fit in those slitty pockets, because if they had there would definitely have been blood spilt. The upshot was that the next owner, a young lad with soft, lilywhite hands, stole at least three pounds from Shed simply by dipping his delicate digits in to retrieve the coins the old skinflint had dropped in there for parking fees.

For some reason Shed's dog hated getting in the back of his V50, whereas she absolutely loves his smelly old W124 estate (attention: joke coming up that only old people might get). Shed was thinking about giving his old hound a surprise by using his somehow still functioning Access credit card to buy a £200 remap for a quick 25 percent hike in power and torque, but Mrs Shed got wind of it and told him his flexible friend was off limits. Shed was worried for a minute until he realised it was the Access card she was talking about rather than the village postmistress. Sorry, you were promised a joke.

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