Should I buy this car. 2002 Volvo s60

General Discussion
1

I am thinking about buying a 2002 Volvo s60. Not a turbo. One owner. Driven by my sister. Maintained by my meticulous brother in law. 129000 miles. No accidents. Beautiful appearance. Recently replaced front bushing joints.

Are there any normal wear and tear items that might need to be replaced in the foreseeable future?
How long can a car like this be expected to last in terms of mileage or time?
Any other things I should be concerned about?

2

While older Volvos can be expensive, the S60 is actually recommended as a used car by Consumer Reports. In addition you know the history well, so it seems to be a pretty low-risk 10 year old car. But you would want to check to see how it’s been maintained and what services are coming up. They should know.

3

I won’t buy it, but that is based on my personal and very expensive repair bills on older Volvos.

If you consider it, the thing I’d look at is the service intervals for fluid changes on the automatic transmission. If the transmission had fluid changes every 30K miles that is ideal. If it hasn’t had a fluid change at all, this is bad. Somewhere in between it is your call.

Ask around what the cost of replacing the transmission would be for this Volvo. If you can handle that number then go for it. I doubt you will get to 200K miles without a new transmission if there has been little transmission service up to this point.

4

If it were that great a car and had credible life left, it wouldn’t be for sale. I would stay away from relative related car purchases that aren’t outright gifts.

5

There are 2 known occasional problems with the 2002 S60. There first is the control arm bushings, and they were just replaced. The other is failure of the Electric Throttle Module. This is solved by cleaning the carbon out of the ETM; no parts are needed. Time required is 1 to 1.5 hours and should cost less than $100. You can read about it here:

http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/Reliability.aspx?year=2002&make=Volvo&model=S60

I imagine that your family will be honest with you as to why they want to sell the car. If it is just because they want a new one, it might be worth it.