3-4 years ago, while looking at a jeep for sale, I noticed just down the street, a late '90s V70, which was just lovely, near perfect inside and out, and engine sounded good, but car would not move, trans totally gone. I looked into what might be done about this, after a lot of time on line, decided all could be done is repair/replace the gearbox, for abt $4k, and wait for it to fail again. Essentially, trans was a POS, nothing to be done. I walked away, gave up on Volvos.

Couple of weeks ago, new neighbor came up with '99 V70 f/s cheap, ok trans, has a miss. Local shop thinks burned valve, refuses to work on the car. I can work on cars, called up favorite machine shop explained the problem, they refused the job, even if I walked in an just handed them the head. Something about valve shims and/or system beyond their ken...

Next town over, fellow has very nice S80 for sale cheap, won't start, probably fuel pump issue, called local Volvo dealer to get price on software update ($235), but service manager inquired into year and model, advised me not to buy car, something about auto trans in Volvos from about '96 to '03 being unrepairable grenades. This from dealer service manager.
I'm wondering if a I actually want to buy a Volvo... Somebody convince me...