At the risk of the inevitable flames since this is a disgruntled Volvo owner board and not a happy Honda owner board, after 20 years of driving Swedemobiles, I've thrown in the towel and have a new Acura on order.

But onto your problem. Is your "Check Engine" light on? It's hard to believe that it could be running like that and not setting any fault codes. If so, well, find out what the fault codes are.

When I hit a piece of truck tire in the middle of the highway a few weeks ago, shattering all those expensive plastic components that Volvo designed to hang down below the bumper (what was Sven the engineer THINKING???) I saw codes set and warning lights go off that I didn't know I had. The car also ran like **** before it quit since the intercooler shattered like everything else. I do remember that Road and Track magazine tested a turbo some years ago and punctured the intercooler that they then fixed temporarily with duct tape, so I'm not the first to experience this.

But If you don't have a turbo, scratch the intercooler and charge-leak idea.

I'd probably have the car towed to my favorite independent Volvo shop. (Volvo dealers are more than 1/2 the problem with these cars.)

-punx