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I would have to guess that those reliability ratings would have to come about in a relative manner based on comparisons to the other products available at the same time. Anytime you compare a Volvo (or most any other Euro car for that matter) to cars like Honda and Toyota and even some of the Yankee iron, the Volvo will most likely lose the reliability race for the short term and maybe even a good part of the mid term. There's no getting around the fact that you can buy a new Honda or Toyota and drive the darn thing for at least 75,000 miles or more and do nothing besides pour in the gas, change the oil, and possibly change the timing belt once. During that same timeframe, you know the Volvo will be back at the dealer at least a couple times for some kind of quirky electrical-relay-fuse-related-check engine light-burnt out bulb indicator-screwed up radio-broken wipers issues.
For the Volvo owner that sticks with it and maintains the car well, the payoff comes down in the "long term". At about 100-150,000 the Japenese car owner is starting to experience blown water pumps, lumpy CV joints, and a driver's seat that's got no padding left in it, so they unload the car and go buy another new one. Meanwhile, the Volvo owner isn't experiencing a WHOLE lot more problems at 100,000 than he did at 30,000.
I have a feeling that the consumer reports' definitions of short, mid, and long term aren't the same as a Volvo owner's definition for those terms. Just for laughs, it would be fun to back 10 or 15 years and see what the consumer publications were saying to buy for long-term reliability. I can't do that because I didn't subscribe to them back then - nor do I subscribe to them now.
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