I may have just gotten rid of my Volvo, too. I'm driving my wife's Oddy today because my Volvo took a hit from a loose tractor-trailer tire yesterday morning. The Honda is reliable and if you want a big box on wheels it's a great box on wheels. But it's no car.

I share your impressions about Volvo never stepping up to the plate when it comes to design issues (I bought the 100k extended warranty and my 1998 model year was already the SIXTH year of the 850 design) and the 1999 S80 seems to have been a disaster of monumental proportions.

But I still don't know how many other cars can take a real-world hit like a Volvo.

Answer? Maybe buy a bare-bones base Volvo with no sunroof and a manual transmission, maybe only buy a Certified-Pre Owned Volvo with the extended warranty, then sell it at 99,000 miles. I don't know. All of the other Eurocars have the same reliability-durability issues as Volvo, Consumer Reports recommends two Volvo models, the most it recommends from any other Euro manufacturer is one model.

They Oddy IS pretty safe, based on insurance claims data and crash testing. But it's still a truck.

-Punxsutawney Phil