Great story.

Love this. Will be interesting to see what the reliability ends up looking like. If decent, I would pick up a 2-3 year old CPO’ed one of these in a heartbeat.

So “old and white” now means you’re “unemployable”. Yikes. Guess I’m effed....

Any idea if the newer Haldex units (or whatever the weak area was for this generation V70) have gotten any more robust/reliable in later models?

Bingo.

Bingo.

...no, no, no.....da’ Burgh ;) (sorry, grew up in Butler....or as I now refer to it, “Butt-hole”. Sorry, but it really is....)

Your review has piqued my interest.

Out of curiosity, how’s the handling and acceleration? The handful of articles I’ve read (including Edmunds) regarding the last few model years seemed to unanimously agree that both areas were pretty awful, and also seemed to suggest reliability still isn’t Volvo’s strong suit.

Very interesting....and scary as hell. But I wonder if the whole business of “not being able to earn enough to get by” speaks to a poor job market or maybe how we, as Americans, have allowed ourselves to be led down the path of “God-given entitlement to consumer goods” combined with the idea of “spending more than we…

Some good information here.

Dammit, if only I knew how to read. Oh... wait.... ;)

This. I made the mistake of buying the Outback XT variant with manual trans. Although the clutch engagement was horrible and the suspension floaty and uncontrolled, I thought for sure that Subaru would still be making the Legacy GT wagon once I had mine paid off and sold. Imagine my disappointment.

Other than the manual transmission cars which maintain a 50:50 front/rear torque split and still use a low-tech, but highly bullet-proof viscous-coupling center differential, Subaru’s AWD systems for their auto trans cars have changed quite a bit over the last few years. I believe most, if not all of the AWD systems…

Oh yes....Rt. 33 in PA is a nightmare when the slippery stuff begins to fall.

Bingo. I sorely miss those days...back when my girlfriend (now missus) would actually say “yes” rather than roll her eyes at me and go on about her business—or better yet—when she would be the initiator! :)

Holy crap, that’s awesome :) Nice to know the trans will handle that kind of HP, but how ‘bout the AWD system? Always wondered if that was the “weak link” of these cars. I seem to recall reading Ford added additional cooling to the power take-off unit on later models of SHO—I’m assuming because cooling was an issue on…

Out of curiosity, is there such a beast as a rear-biased Haldex?

Yeah, the Plasti-Dip caught my attention, too. I know a fair number of folks who’ve used it on rims, but a whole car? Eh..how bad is that paint under there really?

I’m with ya’ on the Q50 Premium. I need to read-up on what options come with which versions, as I though the Premium doesn’t comes with leatherette rather than leather interior—or maybe its a separate package. I’d love to score a 1-2 year old Q50s sans “Direct Adaptive Steering”...

Aren’t all of the Chryslers still utter garbage? I admit their new styling is interesting, but their reliability still concerns me.