V70: Information Used Car Buyer Review of V70

[st5ve]

Used Car Buyer Review of V70

The magazine Used Car Buyer has done an editorial on the Volvo V70, the review is on page 66 of the August/September 2007 issue. It is a very favourable review with the heading being “Estate Of The Art” Volvo V70 from £5K.

Editorial by Andy Pringle

No one does estates like Volvo and this is the finest yet. The V70 is roomy, stylish, comfortable, long-lasting and full of artful touches to ease the grind of daily life. It could be the best £5K you’ll ever spend.

Most car makers are renowned for one sort of car. With Ferrari it’s super cars and with Rolls-Royce it’s luxury saloons. And Volvo? They’re synonymous with estate cars – and they have never made a better one than this, the V70. For proof, simply look at the awards it has won since it was launched in 2000: What Car? Estate of the year for three years, Best Estate in both the Auto Express and the Fleet Excellence Awards in 2001, as well as the Caravan Club’s Towcar of the year in 2006. In other words, this isn’t just Volvo’s best estate; it’s one of the best estates ever made.
Best of all, you can now buy this extremely practical family holdall, which will run reliably well into six figure mileages, for half the price of a super mini.

The powers that be
When this V70 was launched, it originally came with a choice of just two powerful turbocharged five cylinder petrol engines. However, the range soon expanded with a 2.4 litre petrol engine tuned to give 140 bhp or 170 bhp, and a 140 bhp five cylinder turbo diesel.
Come 2002, two new engines arrived. The superb D5 engine became the new diesel in the range, and the high performance R model topped the range. A year later, a 180 bhp turbo charged 2 litre petrol was added. Then the D5 engine was revised in 2004 to boost its power to 185 bhp, which allowed Volvo to introduce a less powerful, cheaper 163 2.4 litre diesel to the range a year later. There was also a variety of bi-fuel options (petrol and lpg or cng) but these sold in tiny numbers.
The only major facelift happened in 2004, but to call it “major” is something of an overstatement. The surgery included a new grille, bumpers and light clusters, as well as a fresh centre console and armrest inside, but the changes are very much of the blink and you’ll miss them variety.

Estate Management
What is remarkable about the V70 is that, unlike all of it’s rivals, it isn’t an estate version of an existing model. Volvo didn’t just take an S80 and graft a big box on the back. Instead, the V70 was designed, from day one and from the ground up, as a purpose built estate car, and that really shows. It may not be the biggest indeed, anyone familiar with Volvos’ old 960 estates will think it’s positively small but what it lacks in outright capacity it more than makes up for with real inventiveness.
Of course, attention will naturally focus on the boot and it is actually a very useful size. The basic 485 litres swells to 1641 with the rear seats folded, and that’s plenty big enough for most families’ needs. For all that, though, it’s ingenious features that make this such a smart car, such as the row of hooks on a fold up panel in the boot floor to keep bags upright, the nets and straps to hold your luggage, and the pop up table between the rear seats.
There’s plenty of space inside for passengers, too, and the V70 will take three across the rear seats in comfort. Only the tallest will complain about the lack of headroom. As for the driver’s environment, Volvo rival Audi for their classy and comfortable cabins. The V70’s dashboard is laid out beautifully, with chunky buttons and easily read dials, and the seats are among the best in any car and they were even better after the 2004 facelift.
The suspension, too, is set up for comfort, but you can still enjoy a meandering country road in a V70. It’s smooth and composed, with less body roll than you might expect. In other words, you won’t have to cope with seasick kids every few miles.
Irrespective of the kind of driving you do, though, the best engine is the D5 diesel. Naturally, it’s the most frugal more than 40 mpg in everyday driving, but it’s the way it delivers its power that makes it so attractive. Because it has as much low down pulling power as the high performance petrol engines, you never need to rev it hard to get the best from it, and that makes for tremendously easy, relaxed drive. Likewise, if you are towing or carting heavy loads around, it’s everything you’d want in an engine: smooth, strong and very refined.
The only trouble is that everyone else knows how good it is, so prices are quite high. Such popularity also means that it will hold on to its value well, so you’re assured of a good price when you come to sell it on. But if you don’t need such a strong engine, one of the 2.4 litre petrol engines makes a fine, cheaper, substitute.
By contrast, the high performance engines are not nearly so attractive. Their sheer power can expose the limitations of the chassis and the R models are particularly disappointing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, they didn’t survive the V70’s full production life and they are very hard to find on the used market.

On the Money
What you will find, however, is a huge selection of other models. More than 50,000 V70’s have been sold in the UK, and second-hand ones now start from around £3000, although most of the cars at this price have mega mileages. For example, we found a couple of 2001, Y plate cars, a T5 and a 2.5 T, up for £3200 and one had covered 132,000 miles, the other 157,000.
Our preferred model, the D5 diesel, starts about £2000 more, and the cheapest we found was a 2001, 51 reg car advertised for £4800 with 170,000 miles on the clock. However there are few cars at this price and all have high mileages, so you’ll need to spend at least £7000 if you want a good selection of diesels to look at.
Face lifted, post 2004 cars kick off at about £9000, but if you’re looking for newer models, it’s best to stick to Volvo’s Selected Used Car Scheme. Although prices here start at £5995 for earlier models and there’s a good selection of cars for just under £7000, the vast majority of Selected V70’s are quite young. When we looked at the available stock for this feature, more than one third of the 660 odd cars were less than a year old.
Best of all, whatever age of car you’re looking at, there’s not too much to worry about. According to Warranty Directs Reliability Index (www.reliabilityindex.co.uk), the V70’s dependability is better than average, with suspension and electrics the most frequent causes of trouble.
Dean Mohideen of Volvo specialists DMW in south west London (www.dmwvolvo.com) agrees: “It’s basically a very sound vehicle. There are no major engine problems to speak of and the gearboxes are very reliable.”
However, Dean says that used buyers should be wary of a fault with the Electronic Throttle Module (ETM) on petrol cars built before 2006. If the engine keeps stalling or is hesitant to pick up speed, that’s a clear sign of potential trouble. The fix can cost £275.
Other than that, he says, the only mechanical problems are generally with high mileage cars. You may hear knocks from the driveshafts and the steering racks can leak. The suspension bushes can wear out, too, especially on the front, and replacing one costs about £200.
You can also find some irritating faults with the electrics, according to Dean. The central locking system can occasionally go haywire and, judging from reviews on Warranty Directs website, the air conditioning system can also be a weak point.

The Owner’s View
Colin Every, managing director of Volvo specialists Kings of Witcham near Ely in Cambridgeshire (01353 778 403), agrees that the car has no Achilles heel and that only high mileage cars have any sort of mechanical problems. The only thing you should really look out for, he says, is the charge pipe on diesel models. If this goes, it will be obvious from the black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe, but it costs only about £70 to fix.
Colin is a former V70 owner himself and is full of praise for the car, especially the fuel economy of his D5. The car was used by his wife for her daily commute on a mix of fenland and main roads as well as on family holidays to mainland Europe, and Colin was amazed that the economy kept getting better, from a little over 40 mpg at 30,000 miles to 47 mpg at 70,000 miles. It also meant that, on long trips across Europe, he could go some 600 miles on a thankful of fuel.
His only criticism of the car are neither the steering lock nor the visibility are as good as on previous Volvos. But otherwise, he says, his car was faultless.
Such recommendation alone might be enough to convince some buyers, but he says there’s always one clincher: “This is a car that’s reliable, safe and comfortable. It’s such a versatile big car, and yet it does 40 mpg, and that’s what really hooks people.”

XC70: A V70 IN HIKING BOOTS
Long before the XC90, Volvo’s first “proper” SUV, the company took their first steps in the 4x4 market by creating a four wheel drive V70 estate on raised suspension. In effect, it was a halfway house between a standard estate and a full on 4x4.
The company’s first effort was the AWD, which was based on the 850 estate and launched in 1996. That led to the V70 Cross Country, which was launched in September 2000 and renamed the XC70 two years later, at the same time as the D5 diesel engine was introduced to the car. (Previously it had been a petrol only model.)
It featured all the comfort and practicality of the basic estate but added an electronically controlled four wheeled drive system and some chunky mouldings, which gave the body a tougher image. Even on it’s raised suspension, the ground clearance is still quite limited, so it’s not a great off roader. But it will have an appeal to caravanners and boaters, and it makes an interesting alternative to a V70.
The biggest stumbling block however is price. Even the cheapest version cost more than £28,000 when it was new and it remains an expensive choice as a used car. The cheapest petrol starts at £8500 and the diesels cost from about £11,000.

“This isn’t just Volvo’s best estate. It’s one of the best estates ever made”