That is a great price for a '99 V70AWD. As an owner of one myself I hate to hear that, but good for you.

You don't say what part of the US you live in. If you are not in the snow belt I would not take on the AWD. In my experience it is NOT true that Volvo FWD and AWD are equally adept in snow & ice. The AWD is pretty impressive in action. But, also in my experience here in the Puget Sound region, in 3.5 years of ownership I've actually needed the AWD only twice.

The AWD is finicky and delicate and very expensive to fix when it goes wrong. Presume you know about the replace-all-four-tires-at-once dictum. It's really serious -- otherwise you can throw the bevel gear out of whack. If you go ahead with the purchase I would have a Volvo mechanic look the drivetrain over VERY carefully. Also it adds approx. 500 pounds to GVW so your mileage suffers accordingly. We get about 18 city, 24 highway.

The other chronic problems with the 98-00 V70s apply equally I think to FWD and AWD cars -- headlight burnout (there's a recall fix), power drivers seat rocking loose (ditto), premature broken engine mounts (happened to me at 25k miles), power window/lock switches breaking (hasn't happened to me yet), groaning in the front end (check and flush tranny fluid), headliner and door liners coming away (comes from weak eco-friendly glue)...

I will say this: THESE CARS ARE NOT BRICKS. At least not the durable, reliable, dog-faithful Volvos of yore. Don't buy the car with that expectation -- buy it because you like its comfort and solidity and drive characteristics. You think you are buying reliability and peace of mind, and they still base their advertising on those values, but I think those qualities were actually engineered out of Volvo cars some years ago. These are incredibly complex, unforgiving, delicate, some might say overengineered cars that are not as well built as BMWs or Benzes, let alone the Japanese premium brands. The V70AWD is a very safe car of course but other vehicles come close to Volvo safety standards nowadays if not equalling them. So if you think you are getting a BRICK that will give 25 years of consistent service, like those 1977 240s you still see loping around, think again. We are buying an extended warranty for our V70AWD this year and will count ourselves lucky to get ten years out of it. (Judging from the price you are looking at we'd be crazy to sell ours now, although it has just 35k miles.)

Good luck with your consideration of Volvo.