Hey there,

Sorry you had problems with your car. Your situation reminds me of some BMW commercial though.

"while some car companies put their engineering efforts into making cars survive accidents we put our efforts into making them avoid them all together" (3 or 5 series swerving out of the path of danger fade to black)

Why did you decide to go with another Volvo by chance? I have a 1998 S70 that I love dearly but has been one of the most troublesome cars I have ever owned (even more troublesome than the oil burning pieces of shit I drove in college). If my S70 were totaled I would be sad for a parting moment but I would never turn back.

I have heard of other makes having similar problems to what Volvo does. Remember Jaguar in the 80's? The major difference is a company that is willing to accept their mistakes and make the customer's owning experience as pleasureable as possible. Jaguar ate a lot of work that was "questionable" during their bad period. It almost put them out of business but their reputation speaks for itself as a very fine automobile. Volvo on the other hand has to be fought with to fix even blatant warranty issues that are completely their responsiblity. I know Volvo is trying to do a lot of work with their "revolvolution" ad campaign but I think a better place to start would be to contact a lot of older owners with "sour grapes" and bandage those relationships (as much as possible I guess). Its impossible to "turn around" the quality of a make over night even with an entire redesigned automobile (unless the S60 is really a ford taurus with a really good cover up job) so Volvo is going to have the same issues that they did with the S70 owners with the S60 people.

Regarding your car perhaps if you still have access to the wreckage it might be prudent to call your local NTSB office and see if they could shed any light into the "reason" for the failure. You could have a very good case against Volvo for product liability. For a maker so concerned with saftey their intolerable attitude about repair issues makes them very unsafe in a way. Two of my seatbelt anchors in my S70 failed in a way to make them release by themselves. When I brought it in for repairs the dealer tried to charge me for the work and installed the anchors backwards (another visit to the dealer when my 80 year old grandmother was stuck in the back seat and had to be "let out" because her release button was underneath the belt. In an accident she would have not been able to evacuate without assistance).