Why Volvo

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by HankScorpio

I'm a weak individual when it comes to cars. It's the wifes 40th this year and I'm really trying not to spend the savings on an Austin Healey Sprite.

Perfect solution - buy the wife the AH Sprite for her 40th! It's a unique present after all.........

[Dash300]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Perfect solution - buy the wife the AH Sprite for her 40th! It's a unique present after all.........

Great investment! Why not stretch to the 3ltr. even better!

[DSK]

When I was 26, my uncle owned one of the C70 T5's I have now. At the time I had a Celica GT4 and had to drive the Volvo as he was drunk..... even at modest speeds, the performance was stunning and the comfort...… I told him to sell it to me when he decided to move on.

I covered 150,000 miles in it since and the sheer sense of well being is like very little else. Its mechanically run rings around anything else I have owned and slowly a Jaguar XKR 4.2, E39 BMW M5 were kicked off the driveway being replaced by more Volvo's!

All have been uber reliable, laughing in the faces of modern stuff I tried alongside taking 1,000 mile a week commutes for the last 10 years like it was only a mile, never skipping a beat, proudly showing a clean pair of heels to many more modern machines.

[HankScorpio]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Perfect solution - buy the wife the AH Sprite for her 40th! It's a unique present after all.........

I should have been clearer...

... It is for her. She used to have a 1966 Sprite. She loved it more than me.

Quite frankly, she deserves one too.

[T5R92011]

For me, it's because they have what I call "premium longevity", sometimes at the expense of being a little bit behind the times.

For example, the Volvo V40 hatchback from 2012. One of the criticisms it received at launch was that it featured a telephone keypad in the center console, despite the practice of manually dialling a telephone number being woefully outdated with the target audience the car was aimed at.

Fast forward FIVE years later when Volvo facelifted the V40... and the telephone keypad remained! That's the same keypad that's been in place since 2004 from the P1 S40... so if you owned a final 2017 model year V40, you're sharing technology from a car designed nearly 15 years prior. Yet you look at a 2017 BMW model, and everything is "latest idrive hand gesture voice command headup display"... they are worlds apart, and actually I appreciate that Volvo lets it's technology get a good run and stand the test of time.

[Briggo]

and the telephone keypad remained!

That doesn't mean they're ahead of the curve, thats just cost cutting.

Who else has a keypad on their interior dash? No one as its an unnecessary large amount of space taken up.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by T5R92011

Yet you look at a 2017 BMW model, and everything is "latest idrive hand gesture voice command headup display"...

I can just imagine the chaos if a wasp flew in while driving.......................

[T5R92011]

Originally Posted by Briggo

That doesn't mean they're ahead of the curve, thats just cost cutting.

Who else has a keypad on their interior dash? No one as its an unnecessary large amount of space taken up.

I agree it's unnecessary and a company like BMW or Audi would get rid of it immediately. Im just making the point that prior to the new models under chineese owner$hip, almost every volvo felt out of date compared to it's rivals. And sometimes being out of date = more reliable.

Case in point, I just bought a year 2000 V70 classic (P80) and as soon as I sat in it, it felt significantly ancient compared to other cars from the year 2000 and earlier that I've previously owned. Now obviously we know it's a reskinned 850 underneath, but in terms of longevity it's reassuring to know it's tried and tested.

Same with the first XC90... that car was on sale from 2002 to 2014.
For comparison BMW launched three generations of it's X5 competitor during the whole time the original XC90 was on sale.

[RollingThunder]

It could have been a different story for me - I could have been a lifelong BMW or Citroen enthusiast !!!

I was in my early 20s and had my own company - I was looking for something more responsible looking than my bright red XR3i, which I was told, was giving out the wrong signals, and meant I wasn't being taken seriously ?!

So I visited three dealerships, to look at a BMW 325i, a Citroen XM 3.0 and a Volvo 940.

I was almost frog marched out of the BMW dealership, along with a ringing 'Don't waste my f*****g time!' when I asked about a possible test drive of the 325i. I'll come back to that later...

I loved the Citroen XM (and still do). It was spectacular but they had a long waiting list for the top of the range 3.0 version, and I didn't want the turbo diesel which is the model they were trying to sell to everyone. I was working for a Volvo dealership as a QA consultant at the time, and when I mentioned that I was in the market for a new executive class car... it was almost embarrassing. They showed my a 940 2.0 GL that they had in the showroom - it was very comfy and I loved the boxy styling but it was gutless. They asked me to come back at the weekend, which I did, to find that they'd brought in a 960 3.0, a 940 2.0 Turbo and a 940 2.3 Turbo! All fuelled up and ready for me to take out on a test drive - unaccompanied, and 'for as long as I wanted'!

I ended up buying the 940 2.0 Turbo as it was great fun to drive and cheaper to insure than the others. I had a great discount, and they threw in as many extras as they could get on the car - mats, mud flaps, snow trays for the winter, radio and amplifier upgrade (remember that small graphic equaliser that fitted into the recess under the radio?), reflective bumper stripes, pinstripes, etc etc. My Dad traded his Mitsubishi Sigma 3.0 in for a new 960 3.0 shortly afterwards, and we've both been massive Volvo fans ever since. In fact that original 940/960 shape is still my favourite, and I'll probably buy another 960 in a few years time lol.

Going back to that BMW incident...

When Dad got his 960, we both went back to the BMW dealership - both dressed in our business suits with our new Volvos, and asked to see the MD. We told him of my experience and showed him our TWO brand new Volvos, and suggested that he had not only lost those two sales, but also any future sale as we would now never ever consider a BMW again. My contact in the Volvo garage later informed me that the BMW salesman had been sacked as soon as we drove away from their dealership - he'd gone to Volvo asking for a job - and was shown the door lol.

I've had many many Volvos over the years, and quite a few Citroens, but our family has never owned a BMW since.

Oh, and the 'more respectable' look certainly worked - I was working for P&O European Ferries within weeks - to find the MD was driving a 960 He was well impressed that a youngster like me was driving a Volvo

[Wagon Sailor]

Originally Posted by RollingThunder

I was in my early 20s and had my own company - I was looking for something more responsible looking than my bright red XR3i, which I was told, was giving out the wrong signals, and meant I wasn't being taken seriously ?!

I used to chair a local business networking group. Most of our members were SMEs and many were one-man bands. At one breakfast meeting I set a little exercise. Each table was to come up with the ideal car marque, the one that demonstrated "success without excess". The overwhelming result was Audi.