1996 Volvo S40 2.0 review from Sweden

Not many things, but those that did were expensive...

* Front left spring broke at approx 144000km. Exchanged both front at the 145000km service. Expensive!!

* Mystical electrical problems like the in-car door-locking thingie stops working when outside temperature is over 15degree C, interior lights flicker when outside temp over 20degree C... This is still not fixed when I sold the car.

* Headlight height-adjusting mechanism worn out (?) and broken. The spares are really cheap (100SEK each) but the job was 1200SEK...

* The local Volvo Authorized garage is consistently bad at fixing things you tell them. Like the fact they forgot to screw back the indicators after fixing the headlights heightadjusting mechanism. They fell out when driving on the highway and I wouldn't have noticed if passing cars haven't had alerted me on the fact. Stopped at parking, screwed them back with a penknife and saw that the hanging iindicators had scraped the painting. After a nasty fax to the garage, they recalled the car and fixed things properly for free.

* Nice handling at both low and high speed. 200kph (and it wanted more, but the straight finished) on the German Autobahn is not a problem, even with the automatic shifter that I had.

* Curious electrical shocks when closing and touching the front doors, no matter the weather, season, and/or clothing.

* Good fuel average. Driving outside cities averages at about 7,4 Liter/100km with full load and two passengers. In-city about 10Liter/10km. This is with the 4speed automatic shifter in standard mode. Sport-mode increase the numbers somewhat.

* 2.0-liter 140bhp is somewhat rough and needs revving up to and over 3000rpm to really show-off. Below 3000rpm is not bad, but not anything to go Ohh! and Ahh! about.

* The Cruise Control is great. It keeps the speed gently w/o accelerating or slowing down harshly, as I've seen in other car-brands.

* The trunk opening is too narrow and I kept tearing the rubber packing when loading wider-than-usual cargoes, like shelves.

* Overall a great car, even though people say that the Belgian and Netherlands-built cars are a total disaster, and that the Mitsubishe-base is inferior.