Well, I might!

But I'm a bona-fide Volvo nut who belongs to the Volvo Club of America and enjoys tinkering with his cars. (Actually, I would buy her a T5, the non-turbo SE is a slug!)

But if I weren't a Volvo nut, and I didn't have a good set of metric tools and a tame independent Volvo mechanic, I'd probably think of buying her a new 2005 Honda Accord EX, AT and cloth seats, low $20s and it comes with stuff you couldn't even get on a 2000 Volvo, like stability control and both head and side airbags in addition to 3 years of warranty. When people ask me about buying Volvos I always caution them that the cars are awfully maintenance intensive.

I happen to have a daughter who turns 20 today, who is way at college and who walks around in a state of perpetual sleep deprivation, since she's unwilling to sacrifice academics or extracurricular activities. ("Extracurriculars, sleep, work; you'll have time for any TWO!")

She has no car at college and has access to a rustbucket $200 Merc station wagon for when she comes home. I feel much better not having her commute to college at all. Her housing costs $3,980.00 and the Standard Board Plan is $3,510.00, and this is at an extremely overpriced liberal arts college. Still cheaper than a used Volvo S70 or new Honda Accord, and I sleep much better at night.

My $0.02

-BTC

'98 V70 T5 5-speed, 147k mi. iPd stabilizer bars, Volvo strut tower brace and skidplate, Bilstein HD, E-codes, Valentine-1