V50, shooting myself in the foot

[vanreis]

Hi,

I am the proud owned of a Protege5. This has been a fun experience, but now that we have moved to California and cars are cheap here I was thinking of buying a Volvo V50, T5. A 2005 with 50,000 kilometers runs about $19K in these parts.

Am I shooting myself in the foot by selling my perfectly running Mazda Protege5 wagon, which is a little hard for my wife to drive? Am I buying a headache for myself by going from a Mazda Protege5 to a Volvo? I am mainly concerned about reliability, since for my Mazda I hardly ever had to open the Hood for 5 years.

What are your experiences with the V50 T5 in terms of reliabilty?

Edited by vanreis on Wednesday 28th November 07:36

[agent006]

It'll not be as tediously reliable as the Mazda, but it won't be far off. I've driven a diesel V50 in the UK and it's a great car, the T5 even more so. Not particularly big though, cramped rear legroom and the boot's not up to Volvo expectations. I guess that's a result of it being Focus based.

To save others googling, the Mazda the OP is referring to is the US version of the last model 323.

[After_Shock]

agent006 said:

It'll not be as tediously reliable as the Mazda, but it won't be far off. I've driven a diesel V50 in the UK and it's a great car, the T5 even more so. Not particularly big though, cramped rear legroom and the boot's not up to Volvo expectations. I guess that's a result of it being Focus based.

To save others googling, the Mazda the OP is referring to is the US version of the last model 323.

The space issues are to do with the fact its a replacement for the V40 also a small estate and have nothing to do with it sharing the same chassis as the Focus.