Updated at: 23-05-2022 - By: Lucas

If you’re looking for a new or used car, you may want to think about a Volvo. Are Volvos good cars, though? This depends on a lot of things! There are many ways to find out if an automobile is safe and reliable. In this article, we will look at them all together.

When you’re buying a car, you should know that information is a powerful tool for making deals. Make sure you do a lot of research on the cars you’re interested in and have a budget in mind before you go to the dealership. This will help you avoid leaving with the car that gives you the least value for your money.

Let’s dig in!

Volvo history

The Volvo Group, also called A.B. Volvo, is a Swedish multinational company that has been making things since 1927. It is now one of the most important companies that makes things like trucks, buses, construction equipment, and drive systems for industrial and marine use. The main office of the company is in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Volvo brand is used by both the Volvo Group and the Volvo Car Group, which makes cars. The Volvo brand is used on goods and services from both companies. A.B. Volvo owned Volvo Cars until 1999, when it sold the company to the Ford Motor Company. The company is now owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely Holding) of China.

Volvo cars and models

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In 2018, Volvo Cars sold more than 624,000 cars. SUVs, sedans, and station waggons are made and sold by the company. Volvo makes hybrid cars as well as cars with gasoline or diesel engines. In the world of cars, a hybrid is a car that has both a gas or diesel engine and an electric motor.

In July 2017, Volvo Car Group said that from 2019 on, all new models will be either fully electric or a mix of electric and gas. The company also said that between 2019 and 2021, it would release five fully electric cars. It also wants pure electric cars to make up half of their sales by 2025.

The Volvo XC40 Recharge, Volvo’s first all-electric SUV, came out on October 16, 2019. The car’s battery has a nominal capacity of 78 kWh, and when fully charged, it should be able to go more than 400 km, or 200 miles. The XC40 Recharge will come in 8 different colours and have an infotainment system built on Google’s new Android Automotive software. The car will go on sale in the second half of 2020.

The current Volvo models

XC90, XC60, and XC40 are SUVs.

The V90, V60, and V40 are estate cars.

Sedan: S90 and S60

XC90 Twin Engine, XC60 Twin Engine, V60 Twin Engine, and S60 Twin Engine are all plug-in hybrids.

Mild hybrid: XC90 Mild hybrid (up to 5–7 people) and XC60 Mild hybrid (up to 5 occupants)

You can find used Volvos on the market that are old models that are no longer made. Some of these models, but not all, are:

Sedan: S4O and S80

Estate/Van: V50 and V70

C30 is a sports car.

Convertible: C70

What makes a car reliable?

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With a slogan like “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” you might think that BMW makes the most reliable cars. But everyone has a different idea of what makes a car reliable. For some, it’s a car that starts every morning and only needs basic repairs (like an oil change, brake job, and tyre change) once a year.

Some people think a car is reliable if it can go more than 200,000 miles without needing a new engine or transmission.

Also, each car has a different owner, a different way of taking care of it, and a different way of using it. So, one car can’t tell you much about how reliable a whole model is. Still, here are some things you can do to figure out if a car is reliable or not.

Check reliability reports

There are many consumer reports that talk about how reliable different makes and models of cars are. Look at the information from more than one source to get a more accurate picture. Consumer Reports, for example, looks at 17 different parts of a car to figure out how reliable it is. Some of these parts are the engine, the transmission, the body, and the paint job. To be considered reliable, a car must do well on the tests.

Read owner reviews

Know exactly which car you want? Go online to see how the car is rated and what verified owners have to say about it. Yes, the same way you would before buying something on Amazon or eBay. This will give you a good idea of how reliable a car is and more. There is this kind of information on websites like J.D. Power, Edmund, and others.

Ask around

Talk to your friends, family, and coworkers who have used different brands you might be thinking about. They might tell us something new and useful about how reliable a car brand is. Also, ask your questions and talk about your worries on different forums and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Let’s talk safety

The first Volvo was made in 1927. It was called the Volvo OV 4. Since then, Volvo has grown into one of the best-known and most-respected car brands. When the company makes cars, safety is one of its main concerns. And it is a leader in this area, with innovations like the modern seatbelt, the pedestrian detection system, and the side impact protection system.

As long as we’re talking about safety, Volvo Car Group wants to make sure that no one gets hurt or dies in a new Volvo car by 2020. What a way to make a point! The XC90 is one of nine cars in the US where no one died from 2009 to 2012, which is the most recent time period for which data is available.

Have you seen the awards?

Over the years, Volvo has also won a lot of awards. Based on the number of awards, it’s clear that people in Europe and Asia think Volvos are well-made cars. The 2018 World Car of the Year award went to the XC60. Volvo has won a number of awards in 2019.

The V60 was the U.K. Car of the Year’s best estate.

The S90 won XCAR’s award for the best executive/luxury car.

Coty named the XC40 the Irish Car of the Year.

Annual Luxury Midsize SUV by Global Auto – XC60

What Volvo owners report

Which? is the name of the biggest independent consumer group in the UK. It has an annual survey about cars where tens of thousands of people tell them how reliable their current car is. From December 2018 to February 2019, they did a survey. The results showed that newer Volvo models (those less than 3 years old) did pretty well, giving the brand a 4 star rating.

As expected, Volvo also did well in the survey when it came to safety. But, like many other brands looked at in the survey, once the cars were more than three years old, they were less reliable. Most owners of 3- to 8-year-old Volvo models said they had problems that needed to be fixed by an auto mechanic. So, the rating for older Volvos went down from 4 stars to 3 stars.

Also, most of the problems that owners of different Volvo models said they had were with the computer software or satellite navigation (sat-nav). Less than the average number of owners of other brands, only 2.3% of Volvo owners had problems so bad that their cars broke down completely.

What about the reliability of each model on its own? Well, Which? says that the first-generation XC60 (from 2008 to 2017) doesn’t have a very good reliability score. The average rating for models in that range from 2008 to 2017 was three stars, while the average rating for models from before 2008 was two stars. The best XC60 to buy is one from the second generation, which was made after 2017. During that time, it won a lot of awards.

The most commonly reported problem

First-generation XC60 owners most often had problems with faulty tyre pressure sensors and the sat-nav system. Even though these problems aren’t too big, some of the other problems that were mentioned were, for example, transmission failure. Many of the problems that newer first-generation car owners have are not common in newer cars. Only 1 percent of these cars break down, which is a good thing.

Even more trips to the garage were made by owners of first-generation cars that were 3 to 8 years old. 44 percent of the owners said that they had to get their car looked at by a mechanic. Most cars had problems with the battery or the system that controls emissions over and over again. One in twenty XC60 owners who took part in this survey said that their cooling system was broken.

Participants in the survey said that the second-generation XC60 did relatively better. As cars age, they will all need to be fixed.

Additional factors to consider

In addition to reliability, here are some other things you should think about to make sure you get the best deal on a car and avoid problems.

Look at the different makes and models of cars from different companies.

Get prices from different car lots for the car you want.

Find out how long the warranty from the factory will last and what kinds of repairs it will cover.

Research different ways to pay for the car, such as bank auto loans and dealer financing.

Before you apply for financing, check your credit score and credit history to get a better idea of the options you have.

Get an estimate of how much car insurance will cost for the model of car you want to buy.

If you are buying a used car, look into its history and see if it has a clean or branded title. You can use a site like CarFax.com to do this.

Ask the seller for the car’s repair history to make sure it works well.

Check the VIN to see if there are any recalls for the model of car you own.

Check the car out with a mechanic so you don’t end up with a lemon.

Make sure there are no outstanding liens on the car.

Conclusion

Volvos might not be the most reliable cars on the market, but they aren’t the least reliable either. When they are between 3 and 8 years old, Volvos are about average in terms of how reliable they are.

In customer surveys, however, Volvos that are less than three years old do very well. It makes sense that cars that aren’t as old have less problems. We should also expect that car companies will make newer models that are better than their first ones.