I'm sure you'll get lots of opinions on this. You can blow that kind of money on nearly any make of car if you (a) don't take care of it, (b) take it into the dealer and just say "fix it", and (c) don't do any of your own repairs. I had a '95 Taurus which had to have several thousand dollars worth of repairs in the first 80,000 miles and I take super good care of my cars. The Taurus wasn't a car to work on yourself either.

The advantages of the Volvo are that it is basically a fairly simple design, the layout of the car makes it easier to work on than most front wheel drives, parts are inexpensive if you buy on the internet, and you can get really good help on repairs from this Brickboard. Preventative maintenance on the Volvo makes a big difference and the problem areas are well known and described on this board. Most ratings I've seen give the Volvo a very high durability rating and an average reliability rating. By doing your own preventative maintenance, you can make the Volvo very reliable.

On the other hand, if you don't want to do your own maintenace, maybe you should buy a Japanese car (but don't expect repairs to be cheap on these either!)