I'm thinking of buying this '98 V70XC, but after reading some of things about it in the Brickyard and other reviews, I'm having second thoughts (the thing that keeps me interested is owners I've talked to who think it's just a great car, a great choice). I have $500 on the car, but it may worth it to let it go. My question is towability: how much weight can it tow? It has the towing package whatever that is. Also, would a FWD-only V70 tow as much? or at all?

I guess it depends what you want to tow, and how far and often, but here's my opinion:

I love towing with a Volvo....the manuverabilty of the car makes for unrivaled ease of backing and parking...and when you drop the trailer and go to dinner, you have a nice fancy car for a night on the town. I have been towing a 4X8 enclosed trailer loaded full of pottery and art fair displays with a Volvo for 7 years. My longest trips are 1000 miles roundtrip, average is 200 RT....I do this about 15 times a year. I figure that the trailer and load weigh about 1400#.

For 6 years I used a 92 240 wagon....it was a towing champ(underpowered, yes). I installed HD shocks and ipd overload springs. It had a Volvo dealer installed hitch. I now use a 95 850 Turbo. The power is great for towing, rides smooth and at night I forget that the trailer is back there. I drive with the overdrive off, and I keep the turbo boost low. I get about 16-17 MPG.

Volvos by default come with many of the items in a "Towing package" that amerian car manufacturers will charge extra for, including a transmission cooler, good brakes(4-wheel disc), and in the case of the XC, a beefy suspension. Go for an aftermarket hitch and wiring harness

I like the 1998 V70 XC....yes, there are some well documented issues they all seem to share(AC, tracs/ABS module, potential awd related ugliness), but it is a sturdy car, and not that hard to work on. I would make sure that it has all records, and that the timing belt has been replaced when it should have been. And check the cd player.

So I approve. Good Luck,

Steve

Volvo never offered a "towing package" -- i.e., a "towing package" as it's spoken of domestic makers, is a set of factory-installed heavier duty (HD)or higher output equipment to make the vehicle more suitable for towing, including not only the obvious hitch but also HD radiator, alternator, transmission cooler, and sometimes wiring harness to the trailer. It also may include (from some manufacturers for some models) a set of heavier springs and a lower differential ratio.

Volvos aren't sold with any of that installed at the factory. Dealers used to offer auxiliary transmission fluid, and engine oil, coolers as a dealer-installed option for 240s, but I don't know if these are still offered for XC models. Merely a hitch and a trailer wiring connector harness may be the only equipment offered.

To find out how much weight it can tow, check the owners manual. My guess, without seeing a manual, would be about 1,500 lbs without trailer brakes, and 3,500 lbs with trailer brakes (maybe also requiring a transmission auxiliary cooler if offered?), as most earlier Volvos have been rated this way. The only exception is the XC-90, which is rated at the upper limit at 5,000 lbs according to its manual, which I have read.

Recommended towing capacity in North America is 3,300 lbs. In Europe, the rating (a legal limit in the EU) is 1600 kg (just over 3,500 lbs).

For what it's worth, these numbers assume having the car loaded to GVWR. Volvo does not publish Gross Combined Vehicle Weight Ratings (GCVWR). In other words, you don't need to worry about deducting the load in the car from the towing capacity like you do with North American pickup trucks.

Volvo recommends trailer brakes over 1,000 to 1,500 lbs, and also recommends towing with overdrive locked out.

S60, V70, XC70 are all the same. Note that the S40/V50 have a 2,000 lb recommendation in North America, but a 1500 kg (3,300 lb) rating in Europe. Different lawyers, I guess.

Something to be cognizant of: there is a low tongue weight limit of 75 kg/165 lbs - that's a lot less than the 10% minimum tongue weight that is commonly recommended for stable towing. It would work fine for a 2,500 lb boat and motor. (It also seems to work for the typical 20' European travel trailer that weighs less than 3,000 lbs loaded, and has a very low center of gravity and only 7% tongue weight.)

However, it's worth looking at curb weight vs. GVWR very closely. Check the VIN label for GVWR, and compare that to actual curb weight. Weigh the car if you need to. You will probably find an effective load capacity of 1,200 lbs or more. (Volvos are good that way.) Then check the owner's manual regarding weight capacities. Volvo provides separate figures for passengers, roof load, luggage compartment load. If you don't carry luggage of any weight in the car, you may be able to push the tongue weight limit without any problem.

The alternative is to find a custom hitch fabricator to build a Class 3 hitch that will allow use of a light duty weight distributing set-up, like the single bar version from Reese. Then the tongue weight will be distributed across the front and rear of the car, and the trailer axle(s). Unfortunately, Volvo doesn't sell WD hitches; they don't seem to be used in Europe, although the Australians have them.

Consider adding an aftermarket auxiliary transmission cooler. Volvo also recommend synthetic engine oil while towing.

re: "...there is a low tongue weight limit of 75 kg/165 lbs - that's a lot less than the 10% minimum tongue weight that is commonly recommended for stable towing...."

Regarding tongue weights, I experienced a near mistake myself. I was looking for a new tow vehicle to tow the larger powerboat that we were contemplating buying. Right now, we have a '84 280GE (gray-market, Mercedes-Benz Gelaendewagen, a.k.a. GWagen) that adequately pulls our current trailer powerboat, but it isn't up to the task of pulling a larger boat (I do, on the other hand, tow my smaller sailboat with my 240, which it does easily).

I, of course, rejected the notion of getting a domestic SUV because, as a Volvo owner, I appreciate good brakes and handling, which domestics can't seem to master! I only wished that European SUVs (with their emphasis on handling) were up to the task: Volvo's XC90 is limited to 5,000 lbs, which is less than our present, old 280GE; MB's ML (regardless of engine) was limited to the same 5,000 lbs; and MB's new GWagen, with 7,700 lbs, was just too expensive (besides having a miserable repair record thanks to the electronic dodads).

Low and behold, at that time Volkswagen announced their Toureg (and overpriced sister Porsche version, Cayenne)! They were advertising 7,700 lbs (and advertising Touregs pulling 'honking' Airstream Trailers), and I was drooling! Certainly, VW knew how to make vehicles that could corner and stop (when it wasn't towing, that is :-)!

Luckily, however, I didn't buy one immediately! What held me up was a promise of offering a V-10 diesel, with a whopping amount of torque, the following spring, something that I thought was worth waiting for -- and I was glad I waited. Almost as soon as they came out, stories starting appearing to show VW's false advertising. Even their owners manual, which I read at a dealership after I heard about the complaints, advertised 7,700 lbs towing limit, but in finer print (isn't it always in fine print) it indicated a limited tongue weight of only 600 lbs.!

Of course, this meant, in effect if you abide by the 10% rule which I do in order to enhance trailer stability, that the Toureg and Cayenne was really limited to only 6,000 lbs.

Interestingly, initial owners who bought Touregs for the same reason as mine started suing -- complaints were that the trailers were unstable, and the Toureg pitched violently, making driving unsafe -- I saw films of that pitching in a TV news spot. VW eventually (1) pulled all the ads showing the Toureg pulling Airstreams, and (2) eventually settled and bought back (or compensated for) the cars sold misleadingly. So I was glad I waited -- and as it turned out, the big diesel didn't change any of the ratings of the car!

As someone who teaches a state-mandated (N.J.) Boating Certification course (for both the U.S. Power Squadrons and the C.G. Auxiliary), our curriculum includes towing, and as I teach this chapter, I find that while lots of folks in the class are aware of maximum trailer weights (and combined weights), far fewer ever thought of tongue weights as a limitation. I point out that the tongue weight (compared to total trailer weight) is an indicator of how forward-biased the weight of the trailer is distributed, and this can make the trailer either stable or unstable (analogous to having an arrow front or rear heavy) -- i.e., the greater the tongue weight, the more front-biased and the more resistant the trailer will be to sway (and jackknifing) and pitching (which, en extremis, can unload the tow vehicle's front wheels and make steering and braking ineffective).

An interesting sidebar, indeed.

This comes back to my comment that Europeans don't use weight distributing (WD) hitches, and generally seem unfamiliar with them. Tonque weight capacity essentially becomes irrelevant with WD hitch, since the tongue weight is distributed (ideally) in equal thirds across the front and rear "axles" of the tow vehicle, and the trailer itself. The critical factor then becomes the load rating of each axle (as shown on the aforementioned VIN sticker).

VW waffled with the Touareg; said you could use WD, and then said you couldn't. I think that VW, like all European manufacturers, knows towing as well as anyone but missed the boat on WD. Hanging 600 lbs of dead weight behind the back bumper is going to cause handling difficulties regardless of helper springs or anything else, but those owners who have used the Touareg with weight-distributing hitches think it's pretty wonderful.

From the reading I've done on the subject (and I'm hoping to acquire a modest travel trailer of reasonable weight in the future), I've reached the conclusion WD is essential for safe, good handling towing of just about anything towed by a car that weighs more than about 2,500 lbs. There are those that maintain that you need a full underbody frame to handle the "stresses" of WD, but in my view, transferring a couple of hundred pounds of torsion forward through the car is hardly an issue, especially in light of the vastly superior rigidity of contemporary unibodies. But of course, this requires a custom hitch. And this is why I am going to pass on a Volvo hitch when I'm ready to buy one.

BTW, center of gravity influences the needed proportion of tongue weight. A low powerboat will tow well with 8% tongue weight; a tall slide-out travel travel (tall enough to allow the slide-out to clear the tires) will need more like 15%. Fifth wheels are more like 20%. Ten per cent is just a good rule of thumb for most trailers.

A Touareg with the V10 TDI has the torque and gearing to pull like a Kenworth . . . but even the V6s are very good.

But to get back to the original subject, Volvos also have a very good reputation as stable, competent tow vehicles. My only concern with a non-turbo is enough horsepower to pull a travel trailer through the wind at highway speeds.

re: "...Note that the S40/V50 have a 2,000 lb recommendation in North America, but a 1500 kg (3,300 lb) rating in Europe. Different lawyers, I guess...."

You hit the nail on the head. Mercedes, for example, using identical cars has different towing limits for European v. USA.
For the M-Class, the US limit is 5,000 lbs (same as Volvo's XC90, btw)
whereas the European limit is 7,700 lbs -- quite a difference.

For the G-Class (the older, W463, not the new GL-Class), the US limit is 7,700 lbs
whereas the European limit is 8,600 lbs.

Concensus within the MBCA (Mercedes-Benz Club of America) members is that MB has always been more conservative here (they had ABS brakes in European models ten years before putting them on US market cars), ostensibly because we are more litigious, and therefore deserve greater margins of caution on the part of the manufacturer.

Our loss!

Well, I think that answers my question in detail, and I'd to thank you all.