If you truly are a D-I-Y guy, you will hate the V series cars. There are a lot of hidden fault codes that you cannot read with a generic code reader. For a long time, only the Volvo VADIS machine could read these codes. Now, there are some expensive, professional-grade diagnostic tools that can read Volvo codes, if you buy the (expensive) Volvo package. This means that you will have to pay either a hefty diagnostic charge at the dealer or be taken to the cleaners by them when they do the entire job. An example: The ETF light lit up on my 99 V70. I took it to the dealer, who assured me that the throttle module would be covered under the extended warranty. What they found was that the brake position sensor was failing. Not a warranty item, and they wanted $130 for plugging in their machine and reading the code. They also wanted $270 parts & labor to replace it. The brake position sensor is a $70 part that is held on by a single circlip, and takes about 5 minutes to change.

Since I do all my own work, Volvo is off the list of acceptable cars. I still have the 99 V70T5M, but it has been demoted from being my wife's car to being my car. My wife now drives an Infiniti M35, which has had zero failures in 36,000 miles. Before buying the car, I stopped by an independent shop and asked their opinion about Nissan regarding hidden fault codes. They said that Nissan and Toyota were much better than the Europeans about making their fault codes accessible to generic readers.