In 2000 I bought a used 1995 850 Turbo wagon.

Since then it has cost me 19.2 cents per mile for repairs. Close to $24,000.

It has about 200,000 miles on it now, and the 2nd transmission has just failed after less than 40,000 miles.

EDIT: less than 20,000 miles after checking odo records.

( See
https://volvoforums.com/forum/showth...549#post235549
for details )

Repairing it -- and at the same time the rear main seal leak, replacing the timing belt, etc since much of the labor is done already -- is going to cost $4000 - $5000.

So I have to wonder if it is time to give up on this car. But I don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a new(er) car.

 

I recently upgraded to an 03 s60 but I use to have a 98 960 wagon with 248,000 miles on it and for the 6 year that i owned the car it only cost me $500 to replace the starter and 1 coil pack.....then just last year the car started leaking oil...i had a hole in the oil pan and fixed it but the car still leaked so it obviously wasn't the oil pan I did not want to spend more money $800.00 to pull and replace the pan gaskets etc..... so I sold the car even though I feel I had another 100,000 miles left on it I felt that the car was going to start nickel and diming me...it is totally your call, I can tell you that I think your car has more miles left in it but if it were me I would upgrade to a newer volvo and invest the money you would spend on this to repair it towards the new one that's what i did as my car was in need of tires $400, cracked windshield $300, replace oilpan and gaskets $800 for a total of $1,500 I bought an o3 s60 with 130,00 for $3,500 so in essence it really cost me $2,000 having saved the $1,500 and by the way I sold my old car for $1,000 so I really only spent $1,000 and upgraded....so my advice would be to see if you can find a deal like I did(I have a friend who own's a used car lot...that's how I got this deal) and maybe find yourself with a newer car??

 

So how many cents per mile does that come out to?

 

well i bought the car with 120,000 miles so 128000/500= less than a penny a mile.....so I was lucky with that car, this car I have to change the timing belt so that will cost me around $500 and I am having problems with the srs airbag light that needs to be reset that's another $100 and the alarm needs to be serviced which will cost me another $200-$300 so I will have around $900 in this car and have only put around 1,200 miles on it but I can't complain cause it will work out to be pennies in the long run! I will never....never, drive anything other than a volvo they just are very dependable cars but expensive to fix it something goes wrong!! I hope you figure out what you should do, but like I said I would upgrad to a newer model....JUST ONE MAN'S OPINION!

 

Just calculated that this tran has less than 20,000 miles, not 40,000 like I first guessed.

 

It cost $$$ to drive anything. I look at expenses in monthly terms. That is how my budget is set up. When I had a 740 GLE, that car cost me about $3,500 in repair over 17 years and 400,000 miles. I guess that was less than 1 cent per mile. That was $17 per month. Your car cost about $200 per month. New car payments cost about $500 per month average for a nice car that is the quality of a Volvo (maybe).

I believe my 960 cost me about $45 per month and my 850 cost me about $75 per month. I do most of my own work so the expense is actually a lot lower but I figured the cost at "shop cost", if I had to pay a auto shop to keep it up.

The thing that most of us like about driving Volvo's is that the cars ride, handle, etc., in a near new way for years on end. Not like a lot of cars that start falling about just after the 4 year warranty. Most 10 year old cars are really a mess. Moldings falling off, ***** missing, etc., and the people keep driving them until they fall totally apart. Volvo owners usually stop driving their cars because they are simply tired of driving them or someone has talked them into getting something newer, so they can get their hands on the Volvo.

From what I have read on the S60 section, a lot of those owners are paying about $200 per month to care for their cars. To me that is a lot but $300 per month less than payments. Not many of us will take the cost down to the per mile cost but it will cost to keep any car on the road.
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BTW, if that car is going through transmission like tires, something else is wrong. Bad mounts, etc...