Klaus, thanks for the info. Let me first say that I've been burning 87 octane in my '98 S70 n/a since day one when I bought it new. It now has almost 104K miles with no issues at all in the engine (knock on wood). No problems merging into traffic, either. The car is responsive, I get north of 25 MPG where the 940 got low 20's. When I pull plugs once in 30K miles they look like they can go another 30K. Clean and good color, so no bad fuel mixtures on 87 octane. As I said, I have only put 89 in it a few times when I made a mistake. 13 years of 87 and no ill effects or reduction in gas mileage. Owner's manual says 87 (or even 86) is the minimum for N/A cars and it is no lie. Car has performed great on 87 all these years. I would not think of buying more expensive (and less combustible and often not even higher octane because of cheating that is rampant in gas stations) gas. It's regular for me all the way. This is a very common mistake lots of people make misguided by commercials and names of gas grades ("Premium" must be better than "Regular"). My experience indicates that using 87 on my car for the 104K miles has produced no ill effects. I have also put many a mile on many a car with the same experience. If I buy a car used I will use a good quality cleaning additive like SeaFoam or Techron for a few tankfuls and then go to regular gas. Works every time. I have had cars go hundreds of thousands of miles with no engine issues at all. This is all about N/A engines. With turbos it's a different story as the engine is actually designed for a higher minimum octane, correct? This is where my question comes in. What is the official minimum octane for Volvo turbos? I will dig up my owner's manual tomorrow and see what it says about that for '98 turbos.

As far as econobox Honda, no thanks. This is to haul my wife and kids, so it's going to be a Volvo or similar in safety. These cars are cheap now (low resale value) and I am going to get a pretty nice car for under $3K, but I do not need the benefits of a turbo (power under high throttle), so why pay for the extra gas and maintenance? I want safety of a Volvo at the smallest expense. If I was looking for a fun to drive car I would not be looking at Volvos. Anyway, this is why I ride a motorcycle. Cars have close to zero fun factor for me. Just transportation. Needs to be safe, reliable and as inexpensive as possible. I like Volvos a lot because they fulfill many of my requirements for a family car, not because they are good at on-ramp acceleration. Volvos, especially wagons are incredibly well designed for space, comfort and utility. Much better than most minivans or SUVs. I also know how to work on them from lots of experience and this wonderful site. This is why I am looking for a Volvo wagon, preferably non-turbo. This '97 855GLT seems to be a nice one, though I have not looked at it or drove it yet. It has 118K miles, which is not a lot, seems to have been maintained. Turbo is a negative for me, but if it's otherwise good, I may buy it. I am pretty sure it LPT, not HPT. Will know about it more after I've seen it.

Thanks!


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Vladimir. '98 S70 base, 5-speed manual