Hi,

Just wanted to say goodbye to all of you which I have started to se as friend over the last 5 years and a half. I have sold my XC and will soon have my new car. On the one side I feel sorry that it will not be a Volvo again. The dealer has been splendid and they also gave me the best offer for my old XC. However I don't like the new V70 and have had some rather expensive trouble with my car in the last couple of years. Specially with the AWD system. The engine is what I will miss most and probably the seats as well. I tried the D5 diesel, S60 the V70 titanium with 2.5 T and T5 engine even an S80 (don'tlike that at all).
Then I was looking at an Audi but evryone has one and I decided to look at a Saab, which I did and really made me think and read and test. I like the 9-5 Aero 230TS (250 HP) and loved the seats, but there is a lot of torque steer and with only FWD and 250 HP it is difficlut to make some decent mileage of the fron tyres. They are spining all the time. Also reliability and sevice is an issue. Also they gave me the worse price for the XC. I looked at BMW, a bit the story as with an Audi. Finally I decided to go for the all new 2004 Subaru Legacy Stationwagon 3.0R with 245 HP. (Don't know if it's available yet in the US)I test drove that car and allthough the ngine seems a bit "flat" and I'm not very keen on automatic gearboxes (I would prefer a mannual box) the ngine is incredible and is very smooth, it goes up to 7000 rpm without cutting off, and it has 3 modes on the gear box. Standard (long) gears automatic, Sport mode the same as the previous but as if you had a low gear range high reving and finally a sequencially gear mode. Same as sport but with the possibilty to vchange mannually. In this position the car will not change up or down and holds the gears. I was also impressed by the handling and was not able to find the limits on open (wet) mountain roads. Brakes were superb thanks to big 320 mm diameter front disks. It is very loaded and only possible options was the navigator system which I don't need anyway. I got a nice 8% discount on the Subaru (14% on the Saab and 12% on the VOlvo!!) 6 years full warranty or 250.000 kms.
I know it's not a Volvo but this seems much more reliable and it comes with a superior AWD system. If it only would have the Volvo seats and the SAAB Aero engine, it would be perfect.
Well goodbye to everyone.

Crono