Hello everyone,

My GF and I are in the market for a new car. We drove a Subaru Crosstrek which I loved, but we both passed as it was too small. Neither the Outback nor Forrester are appealing to her so we also looked at Audis Q3/5. I'm not a fan of BMWs.uc browser shareit appvn





I've always been curious about Volvos so we drove an XC40 last year and LOVED it! The car was a bit too small for our needs and, as you all know, on short supply. So we're still driving her 2008 BMW X3 with 150k miles on it. I'm taking a new job and we'll be driving back and forth (Boston-NYC) a lot.




We're looking at a 2018 Volvo XC60 T6 with ~5k miles on it. The car is currently listed as "new" although its a dealer loaner that they're offering for ~$41K. My friend said Volvos carry a high maintenance cost and another said the XC90s had reliability "issues" and encouraged me to look elsewhere.




Questions:

• How is the readability/durability Volvos, in general and the XC60, more specifically?
• How is the maintenance cost of Volvos, in general, and the XC60, more specifically?
• Would you advise for/against buying a dealer's loaner car? I don't want to buy new, yet most of the leased 2018s (the year of the XC60 refresh) are still out on lease and we need a car relatively soon.
• What would you consider to be the XC60s competition and would you look at any of these vehicles?

Thank you!

 

Not sure if your "friend" has done any reseach on vehicle reliability records or is referring to XC90 problems from circa 2004. Best to do your own research through KBB, Consumer Reports etc. My view is you are looking at buying a 2018 car which has little in common with pre-2010 cars from design and manufacturing and quality control perspective. ALL manufacturers are improving vehicle performance and quality year over year so a 2018 be more reliable than a 2015 and way more reliable than a 2010. Sure somebody on the board is gonna post up how their brand new car's BLIS camera isn't clear enough and so on but that's what this forum is all about - we only hear about the problems not the 1000s of issue free cars.

So to your questions - reliability will vary manufacturer and within models - particularly where components differ (ie a simply I4 turbo will have a different track record from a hi performance hybrid.) If absolute reliability is your primary decision criteria, there may be a Hundai or Toyota in your future. If you want the styling,performance, cachet and comfort then you should trust that newer is better and Volvos offer an excellent value proposition (I still find Volvo seats to be among the best - I can never get comfortable in my wife's Toyota or my daughter's Mazda.. both fine cars for those who are 5' 6", not so much for 6'+...)

I would also recommend buying a certified pre-owned over new. Most dealer demo/loaners wind up in the CPO program which has the value of the factory warranty, full inspection and genuine parts replacements, typically new brakes and tires etc with the car serviced "by the book". Consider a car depreciates 25% in the first year or so, you can buy a $40K list car for $30K, get low miles, factory warranty and 10K in your pocket (or you can apply it to an extended warranty). Kiplingers did a report that says the best car buy/sell strategies are to buy CPOs with under 25K miles and sell once the car reaches 100-125K miles. This top number assumes maintenance costs will increase due to wear and tear as the car ages.

Comparisons to the XC60 is an interesting question. Check out what US News said:

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/...60-competitors

Personally I find the XC60 kind of halfway between estate car and small sport UTE which is its niche so competitors are mostly the upscale small SUVs like the Q5 etc.

 

To my mind, a lot of the choice should be governed by use, driving conditions and driving experience. In the region you are discussing, you might occasionally encounter conditions where 4WD would offer some assistance (of course, that applies only to the "go" function but not stopping.) so one must ask if that is worth the extra weight, loss of fuel mileage, complication (= more to go wrong/need repair) and poorer handling of the hiked up XC. I have owned an '03 V70, '09 V70 and am currently driving a '15.5 V60 and have never had a weather related issue. the V60 is, overall, probably the best "general purpose" car I have owned over 65+ years of driving. I bought my V60 in early 2018 as a CPO car with ~ 40K miles on the clock.