2000 Volvo V40 from North America - Comments

Nothing as the car was not driven for most of the 3 1/2 years owned. Only maintenance was engine and cooling system flush at 39500 miles.

The service engine light comes on every time one starts the car. According to the owner's manual, it comes on every 750 hours or 12 months, whichever comes first and can only be reset by a dealer.

My oldest son purchased this car from his aunt. As he never got his license, the car sat for 3 1/2 years, accumulating only 2000 miles in that period. After I started driving it, I understand why my son was afraid to drive it.

I June 2003, I traded in our 1986 Volvo, purchase new, on a 13 year old Mercedes 300E, vowing never to own another Volvo as I did not like the new front drive models (except for the 850).

When my wife's sister purchased the V40 new in 2000, I was given a chance to try it out - I turned around after driving 1 block. I knew from that short distance I did not like the car.

Jump ahead 7+ years. My youngest son just got his permit. On Saturday, she took him in my 300E to practice driving in a vacant parking lot. He did fine. Sunday she took him out again, this time he wanted to drive from the house - 2 blocks away he managed to put the 300E into a tree, totaling the car.

I needed a car - fast. I went and picked up the V40, spent $200 for and engine flush (the oil was like molasses) and a coolant flush (the glycol was black like cola). I proceeded to drive across Illinois to where I was living. I was beginning to like the car.

The car requires Premium fuel (91 octane) but will run fine on 87 octane. Where I live 89 octane is the cheapest fuel, the car's performance and efficiency was the same (25 mpg) regardless of fuel grade.

While I liked the pick-up and ride of the car, one thing still bothered me - excessive torque steer when starting and turning from a stop. The more I drove the more I was discovering I did not like front wheel drive. I was starting to worry about the upcoming winter and traction - I live in a very hilly region in NW Illinois. The 300E - rear wheel drive - had no problem going up the snow covered hills in the winter. I have noticed how many of the front drive cars spun their wheels in the snow.

The car is quite fast for it's size and weight. Although called a station wagon, the back seat is more akin to the old 2+2 as there is no legroom for other than small children. The storage area behind the seat is similar in volume to a sedan rather than a wagon. The front seats are comfortable, although they lack lumbar support. The heated seats are very hot and probably unnecessary with cloth seats. The rear window defroster does not turn off automatically. The car has climate control, which works better than the one in my 300E.

While I find the car tolerable, I cannot recommend it. I am not a fan of front drive, 42+ years of driving rear drive cars in all types of weather (and never leaving the road) has me longing for a nice, safe, reliable rear drive car.

I drove this car for about 1 month, during which I spent most of my weekends looking for a replacement rear drive car (not easy to find). I settled for all-wheel drive, a 2002 BMW X5.

Nice review. As a long time Volvo owner I could not agree more. Probably more illusion than anything else, but I still wish Volvo would go back to RWD cars. Besides that, I was and still am very happy with my current Volvo (V70 T5) and all my previous Volvo's (850 T5-R, 460 Turbo, 340 GL, 240 Tic). Most of them covered 500.000 kilometers mark, except for 460 (crash it at 200kkm).

I also agree that turbo isn't great substitute for cc's, but in my opinion car has to have big engine and a turbo (850 and V70 are great cars, except for wrong wheel drive, 460 did the job (still missed RWD), 340 was too slow, but Right wheel drive, 240 was perfect, but it got too old for safe driving).

Poster here. I failed to mention another pet peeve about the car.

As I mentioned, I live in a very hilly section of NW Illinois. While driving in town, I like to use engine braking while going down the steep or long inclines. I usually downshift into 3rd, maybe 2nd if very steep.

All my other cars slow down when I downshift, the Volvo V40 does not, it actually picks up speed.

I feel like your review is misleading. Is it actually a bad car deserving a "frown" or is it that you just don't like small fwd cars?

My wife and I shared a V40 from 1999 to 2004. As a car we really liked how it drove and the luxurious interior. I didn't care for the turbo lag and swore I would never have another car with a turbo, but the S60 and S80 I test drove recently did not have any turbo lag.

As much as we liked our V40, the reliability was very poor. We had all the service including oil changes done at the dealer on schedule. But something broke every six months. Stuff like power seats not working, abnormally fast wearing out of the environmentally friendly brake pads, car would not start reliably, radio stopped working, but nothing that actually stopped it from being drivable. No power train issues. Toward the end, probably half the issues were due to having a bad technician working on it and he was unintentionally breaking things.

About the time our extended warranty was running out, our family was growing and it was time to get a minivan, so we sold it for Kelly Blue Book value.

We had gotten the first year of a redesign - big mistake, although my wife really liked the flip down center arm rest that was discontinued in the next model year. Our car was in Consumer Reports as being much worse than average in reliability. So we were afraid it would be hard to sell. It turned out to be easy. We got eight phone calls from people that wanted to see it. Later our friends told us it had kind of a cult car following.

This first guy bought it. He kept asking if it was reliable. So we told him, absolutely not, this car will cost you at least $1000 in repairs every year. See here, these are the 17 pages of print out from the dealer showing its repair history. We got kind of frustrated with him asking about reliability, so finally we said, if want something cheaper and much more reliable, get a three year old Taurus. He said, "Oh no, I'm not a domestic car kind of guy."

I kind of miss our V40 though. If Volvo ever gets around to redesigning the ancient S60, I would take a test drive on that. Or if they can get the V50 up to average in Consumer Reports reliability ratings, I would consider it. But if a used V40 showed up in our drive way, my wife would not talk to me for a week.