The '93 850 (193k miles) crapped its tranny and with a little one on the way it's time for a wagon anyway. Checked out a bunch of '01 XC70s on Saturday. The only known problem I've heard of is the ETM (electronic throttle module), which apparenly there is a service bulletin on. Not sure if Volvo covers the replacement cost though. Anything else we should know about these cars?? We are in the under 50k miles market, but would love to hear any experiences with the '01 and newer models. Anything we should be looking for/avoiding while shopping?

I see you bought the XC. My question is: Can you take it back?

You already know about the throttle body defect. Cost to repair this is $950-1,200. Your "bumper to bumper" warranty may or may not cover it.

More importantly, you will get little or no advance warning that the XC's engine is about to shut-off. Engine just dies and you coast to a stop. Sometimes you can re-start it and sometimes not. If it can be restarted, it goes into "limp-in" mode with a max. speed of 20-30 mph. If you can't restart it, then it will have to be towed.

These cars can only be fixed at a Volvo dealer or the rare independent that has paid the necessary fees to Volvo. If you are miles from a dealer when it happens, you will have to be towed. Think about what this means. If you are travelling in Montana, you may need to be towed in to Minneapolis, MN, for repairs. If you are travelling on I-5 in Central California, you will have to be towed into Modesto, up to S.F., etc., for repairs. Imagine being towed hundreds of miles during a Michigan winter to the nearest Volvo dealer? Not a pleasant thought.

Good luck.

Edmonds17

My experience with our 2001 XC (3.5 years old):

Make sure you get all of the firmware upgrades, there were many software bugs.

Expect that if you get a flat tire, you will probably need to replace two if not all four tires, depending on how worn the tires are. DO NOT drive for any length of time on the donut spare tire. If you need to have the car towed, use a flatbed. These are standard caveats with AWD vehicles, but the XC is apparently particulalry prone to expensive breakage if you don't heed this.

The interior trim wears very quickly and easily. After less than three years, the matte coating on many of the interior surfaces had worn off, along with the silver paint on the center grab handle. The carpeting at the front of the pop-up booster seats was completely worn through (i.e. there are holes in it). In retrospect, this is my biggest disappointment with the car. We are easier on cars than most people and I try to keep my cars clean and neat--the interior just doesn't stand up well to normal use.

The ratcheting passenger seat belts drove my wife crazy. somehow she was always getting them into their locking state and getting pinned to the seat. We never had that problem on any other car with ratchets.

No real mechanical issues. Safe and comfortable, though interior noise was fairly high for a car in this price range (tip: lose the Scorpion tires).

Although we were mostly pleased with our XC, with the odo at 50K, I decided to trade for a Mercedes C240 4Matic wagon before we had any expensive out-of-warranty failures. The C240 is smaller and doesn't have as much storage space, but it is a distinctly better drive--peppier, quieter, more solid). It also doesn't have as much ground clearance, but it is still surprisingly good compared to most cars that aren't jacked-up like the XC.

I was happy we got the XC, but I'm even happier now with the C240.

We did buy a Volvo Certified late'01 last night with 40k on it. It has 2 1/2 years or 60k miles to go on the extended bumper to bumper warrantee. The dealer is replacing a broken center armrest, missing under seat heat ducts and fixing a damaged left rear door interior panel as well as a complete detailing. I'm sorry to hear about the interior wear issues. Guess we'll just have live with it.

Can you elaborate on the "firmware upgrades?" I'd like to address these before we pick the car up. Someone told us that the ETM (electronic throttle module) will probably fail at some point. Volvo apparently has a service bulletin issued on this part, but not a recall. Hopefully it will go under our warrantee period.

Congratulations, I think you'll be happy--well, at least for a while and hopefully longer :)
My son was sorry to say goodbye to the XC.

I had two known firmware upgrades and I suspect at least one more was done as a matter of routine service.

1) The seat/mirror memory performed erratically. You were never sure how things would end up.

Note that Volvo's approach to seat memory is more complicated than most, as each key fob does not correspond to a particular memory location. Instead, along with the three memory buttons on the seat, there is a "hidden" temporary memory for each key fob that stores the position the seat and mirrors were in when you cycled the ignition. If you then lock the door with a key fob, this is the position you will get when you unlock the door with the *same* key fob. If you selected one of the three memory buttons before cycling the ignition, you will get that position back. However if you have made any adjustments to the seats or mirrors *before switching off the ignition*, when you lock the door with a key fob, you will get this new position back when you unlock with that key fob. To get back to the original setting, you must press the appropriate seat memory button again.

This can be handy as you might want to make minor adjustments without changing one of the memory locations and continue to get this new setting back temporarily (for example if you make adjusments to compensate for bulkier than usual clothing). It can also be very confusing, especially if you swap key fobs with your wife, as you can end up accidentally "reprogramming" the response to the key fob. If your wife is driving and gets out, giving you the car, and you then adjust the seat to your liking and later lock the door with her key fob, she will get the adjusted seat setting the next time she uses her key fob. The three seat memories themselves won't be affected, but unless you're careful, you might not get back the right settings when using a key fob.

It can be confusing to program at first, too, since adjustments made to the settings without cycling the ignition do not go into the temporary memory. Here is a reliable method of setting things up with the key fobs: After you have programmed a seat memory button to your preference and another seat memory button to your wife's preference, select your seat memory using the appropriate seat button, start the car with your key fob, turn the car off, get out and lock the door with your key fob. Wait a minute before unlocking the car. Now repeat the procedure for your wife using her seat button and her key fob. Don't share key fobs.

OK, thats a long-winded explanation of how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately there are bugs in the code and we would often end up with radically incorrect settings. After two separate upgrades for this issue, we got to the point where the seat operation was predictable but not the mirrors, which would often move out of position for no reason. You would lock the car, come back later and unlock it with the same key fob and both mirrors would be way off. I'm not sure when or why they moved, but it's not something you want to find out during a high-speed merge. We got into the habit of always selecting our desired memory button and checking the mirrors before we drove off and didn't rely on the key fobs at all.


2) A bug in the body control computer would put it to sleep for unkown reasons. This would manifest itself as things like the sunroof, door locks and homelink not operating. I thought it was a fuse, but the dealer told me there was a firmware fix and that to get around it until I brought the car in, you could just cycle the driver's door lock with the key three times and it would reset the computer. Didn't have the problem again after the upgrade.


3) Make sure you get the upgraded key fobs. The original ones had buttons that would bind and wouldn't always release. This produced erratic results when you would press another button on the fob--the panic alarm would go off when you would lock the door, the external lighting would turn off when you would unlock the door, the car wouldn't lock when you pressed the lock button, etc. New key caps fixed the problem.


Although it never happened to me, from what I've been told, just be aware that if the dreaded throttle-body failure occurs, it's not only expensive, but your car can just die on the spot without warning. It might not happen in your garage or a parking lot, it might happen in traffic. If there is a reliable replacement form Volvo, I would get it.

I should also point out that, as someone who has had a number of 4WD/AWD vehicles, our XC got great gas mileage (21-27 mpg). So does the C240.

This is really minor, but was an ongoing issue. If you wear polarized sunglasses, the LCD instrumentation becomes unreadable--the dashboard displays appear totally dark.