USED Volvo S40 Saloon (04 - )

My car

Having owned the car 3 months I'm very disappointed with the car as a whole. I find it boring & noisy to drive with greatly inflated performance & fuel figures as quoted by Volvo, I'm getting no where near the 50 mpg quoted; only after buying the car did I discover it had a Peugeot engine, very disappointed. Having traded a Astra 1.9 CDTI 150hp in for this car which was a fantastic car, fast, quiet & economical the quoted performance from Volvo are very similar, or so they say, this car is no where near as good as the Astra on performance & fuel economy, in all I’m very disappointed with the car and do not intend to keep it to much longer, Vauxhalls may have there faults but you do not have to take out a second mortgage to service the car.

My car

Great to drive, great road holding, but very poor dipped headlights.

The car sometimes just cuts out - it has been to the dealers several times since new, but it still happens it after two-and-a-half years. Cruise control sometimes stops working, too, and the CD player just stopped working.

The local dealer in Crewe is very hit and miss - the last time they never bothered to collect the car and when they did after a few days it came back with the work not done. When l asked them why, they said they were busy.

I will not buy another.

It's a shame, because the drive is very good.

My car

I have owned this car for over 2 years and not had a single problem with it: very good, solid build quality. The five cylinder engine is excellent - it is not the fastest in the world, but plenty powerful enough and very smooth and quiet- almost as good as a 6-pot. Economy is reasonable for an engine of this size - I get mid 30s mpg on long trips. There is too much road noise on rough surfaces, which is a pity as otherwise the car is very quiet. (The SE has 17inch alloys) Interior good apart from silly radio menu - you can't turn traffic info on/off without going through several commands, which is impossible if driving.

My car

I bought a S40 2.0 diesel in June 2006.

Since then it has spent in excess of 127 days (four months) on the Volvo dealership workshop floor and it still hasn't been repaired.

It has had three new fuel lines, two injector pumps, one set of injectors, a new fuel cap, two EGR (ECR) valves, several software upgrades and who knows what parts they want to fit this time!

Still Volvo and Volvo SA are unable to solve the excessive diesel smoke from the exhaust, the intermittent starting problems (some days it starts, some it doesn't), the air bubbles in the fuel line, the high fuel consumption, the cutting out when there is fuel in the tank, and the buzzing noise from the engine when ingnition is on.

The car has been towed three times to the dealer, and I have had to call Volvo assist five times.

When the car runs it's not bad, but this is without doubt the worst car I have ever bought.

If I could, I would burn it!