What can I say wwaldo...I'm sure you have mountains of research to back up your claims. I can only repeat what I read. I know that when I go through the archives of the volvo boards that the same authors keep popping up with the same complaints spun a little differently. I also know that when I talk with owners of S80's at the dealership that they are generally satisfied with their purchase.

I also know that when I test drive a Benz and the dealer first tells me an unshiftable gearbox only needs to be broken in and then a week later admits there is a problem and says it's the second bad transmission in a month, that I have at the very least a credibility problem, if not a quality problem. Volvo had some problems in 1999 with their S80. Not surprising considering how new it was. What is important is that Volvo fixed the problems.

That's not to say that some Volvo's (or Benz or any other car) won't have problems. The key is having a dealer and manufacturer that will stand behind their product. In 2000 when I asked my dealer about the 1999 models they were honest about it and explained where the problems were and how they were corrected. That plus over 15 years of good experiences with the same dealer convinced me a new 2000 S80 was the way to go.

And one other thing. Before making a broad statement about the resale value of certain model years over others, please do some research. I did and found comparably equipped S80's with comparable milage are priced year-to-year by about the same margin. No big gap in 1999 or 2000.