XC90: Most Unreliable Car

[c1800]

"well that's because most Honda Jazz's only do 2000 miles a year"


Hmmm

[Roosterb]

No surprise to me. Constant ridiculous failures and glitches. I wonder sometimes how much real life testing they do.

[Roosterb]

Originally Posted by c1800

"well that's because most Honda Jazz's only do 2000 miles a year"


Hmmm

Mine only does 7k per year and Has spent an awful lot of time in the dealership.

[Dulcise]

Cars are usually as reliable as the owner wants them to be....i.e. what they want to spend on servicing and maintenance and how good the techs are that carry out the work.

[Bonefishblues]

Most new XC90s will be within the warranty period and I suspect not subject to servicing neglect yet.

[100K+]

Just read this post. If "statistics" can be accepted to prove anything
https://www.reliabilityindex.com/
show the XC90 with a rating of 191 ( ok its from 2002 on )
My V70 P2 is now more reliable than my V70 P3 and the most reliable Volvo appears to be the C30.
Normally i'm sceptical of statistics, but in this case a business is trying to make money from them, so they may be more accurate than some

Cheers
Bob

[Fika]

Negligence regarding maintenance is being mentioned quite a lot, but look at the owners manual for the newer XC90s:

Under normal driving conditions, the transmission fluid does not need to be changed during its service life. However, it may be necessary in adverse driving conditions

When a customer takes their car to the Volvo stealership to be serviced, they'd expect servicing of the critical components of the care i.e. engine, transmission. And what is meant by "during its service life", linguistic gymnastics? Volvo's planned obsolescence in action?

[Kev0607]

Volvo aren't the only manufacturer that claim the transmission fluid doesn't need to be changed under normal driving conditions.

Supposedly, transmissions are "sealed for life" nowadays. Take that as you please, no fluid lasts forever in my book. If the transmission has a drain & a fill plug, its there for a reason!

By "service life", I presume they mean that the fluid never needs to be changed under normal driving conditions for as long as the vehicle lasts. Again, take that as you please.

One would presume that servicing a transmission, in addition to other regular maintenance like oil changes etc would be good practice to ensure the vehicle lasts as long as possible. Then again, the manufacturer's want you to buy a new car every few years. They don't want cars that last forever, as that wouldn't be financially viable for them as a business.

[green van man]

Originally Posted by Kev0607

Volvo aren't the only manufacturer that claim the transmission fluid doesn't need to be changed under normal driving conditions.

Supposedly, transmissions are "sealed for life" nowadays. Take that as you please, no fluid lasts forever in my book. If the transmission has a drain & a fill plug, its there for a reason!

By "service life", I presume they mean that the fluid never needs to be changed under normal driving conditions for as long as the vehicle lasts. Again, take that as you please.

One would presume that servicing a transmission, in addition to other regular maintenance like oil changes etc would be good practice to ensure the vehicle lasts as long as possible. Then again, the manufacturer's want you to buy a new car every few years. They don't want cars that last forever, as that wouldn't be financially viable for them as a business.

Unfortunatly the drain and fill plugs are not always there. There was a thread on the P3 v/xc70 section where an owner could not find the fill plug on their manual gearbox to which I contributed, turns out that between my model and his the fill plug had been omitted and he had to remove the gear linkage to fill the box.
To my mind that is volvo actively discouraging gearbox servicing. Prestige rip off merchants rather than quality car makers.

Were I in the market for a disposable car I would buy a great Wall that is at least honest about its terrible quality as reflected in its price, not a 60k+ volvo that claims otherwise.

Paul.
Paul.

[Fika]

It's all quite amusing because Aisin (gearbox manufacturer) is pretty much a Toyota owned company... You can trust European car manufacturers like VOLVO (for example) to make a Toyota part an unreliable piece of junk.