I've been told from several people on this board that my car is somewhat rare..

It's an 1992 850 GLT (Sweden) and with 130K miles on it, and the rare thing is , its still running on the orginal auto tranny...

I dunno , is this rare? .. Are they supposed to break earlier?

Feedback please.. And btw , sometimes its hard to write from your heart on this forum , simply beacuse people missunderstand the meaning of my message...

// ermik , 1998 S70 2,5 SE 90k ** 1992 850 GLT 130k <<>> Both Auto tranny , all equip

Heck, it's just getting broken in. Our '95 850 GLT is going to turn 183,000 this week and we've never had a transmission problem (crossing my fingers as I type!).

Do a flush?

No, not rare at all. We just get to read about all the problems on this site.

really, if people said all the good things im sure we'd see a better picture of the 850. The '93 gets a really bad rap, espically by owners of '94+ cars who tend to quote from stories and badmouth it to the heavens.
--
Matt in MA, '93 850 GLT

Mr. Ermik,

I have a 93 850 GLT with 120,000 and original transmission. I bought it at 90,000 and there is no record of any trans job or problem.

The transmisson is in excellent shape except slight slam from 1st to 2nd. I heard it is normal. However, for some unknown reason, after I drove the car in Sports mode for few months and went back to normal driving mode (I keep it a Economy mode), and now 1st to 2nd is much smother. Weird! I do not know what caused it.

Before, I had a Honda Prelude with original transmission at 190,000 miles. I stay away from sudden acclerations and like to flush the trans fluid every 7,000 to 10,000 miles.

Ronjon

Although it's possible that the 850 came out a year earlier in "the father land" Sweden, that model arrived in the US in the spring of '92 as a '93 model year car. All the owners literature lists it as a '93 here too. I remember those days well as being a tech, we had to go through 2 weeks of school for that car because it was so different from Volvos older RWD models then.
As for the tranny, yours is not really rare lasting that long BUT if you don't flush its fluid soon (if never done before) it won't last much longer. I've seen several early 850s go 140-150K miles w/o ever flushing the ATF but then one day the trans just goes.
In the US, there are still many '93 850s with their original trannies. It's not really as bad of a trans as some seem to think.
Now...............the '99 S80s, that's yet another story and I pitty the owners of those cars who buy one used or try keeping it after the warranty expires. That reman trans sells for about $2K and 15 hours labor (book time).

Come to think of it, perhaps it was late summer-fall, not spring of '92 when we saw it here.

Well, it was taken into use 1992-04-20 according to all papers

The manual says " Volvo 850 - 1992 " on the front...

OK, maybe time to do the tranny flush then to be certain.

// ermik

Well as you point out the 92 was not made for US customers. I know for sure that an original 93 tranny with that kind of mileage would be unusual, but I don't know if it the problem also exists with the 92. Sounds good though, good luck.