Subaru Legacy vs Volvo S80?

[M.]

The local Subaru dealer tries to convince me dat Subaru's (Legacy for
instance) are much more reliable en has much lower running costs than my
current '99 Volvo S80 TDi. I make about 40k kilometers per year.

Anybody first hand experience on this one?


Maarten

Nuenen, The Netherlands

 

[Voja]

This will sound disloyal, but what the .... I own Outback 2002 and I
love it but I don't think I'd change S80 TDi for Legacy. Maybe for
Outback H6 3.0R. OK, just kidding.

Anyway, friend of mine has V70 here in Pacific North West (British
Columbia, Canada, Washington/Oregon, USA) and I'll tell you that he had
spent more money on maintenance for his Volvo then me on my Outback.
Parts and labor for Volvo are more expensive then for Subaru, that's for
sure. Then again Pacific North West is know as Subaruland. It could be
that in Europe it is different ball game.

Volvo's good reputation is well known as well as Subaru's.

I know one thing for sure. It would be really hard, I mean haaaaard to
switch to FWD or RWD now that I've tried AWD.

Whatever makes you happy is what matters.

Cheers,
Voja

 

[Edward Hayes]

I went through the thoughts of getting a Volvo S60 and did some
homework. Volvos reputation for being dependable started going
down-way down in the late 90s and early 2000s. It now seems that the
reliability has improved to average on the models built in Belgium
which are the S40, S60 and probably some other models. Look to
Consumers reports April issues if you want some more feedback. Ed

 

[Leon Li]

There was a video that did a comparason between Subaru AWD and Volve's AWD,
test #1 was to hill (muddy) climbing, test #2 was pulling trailer. Subaru
did not have any problem but Volve did.

Do not have the video handy.

 

[John Rethorst]

The local Subaru dealer tries to convince me dat Subaru's (Legacy for

instance) are much more reliable en has much lower running costs than my
current '99 Volvo S80 TDi. I make about 40k kilometers per year.

When doing research before buying my OBW, I found several web sites that all
concurred about overall reliability. In rank order, they said reliable cars were:

1. Japanese
2. European
3. American

Within the first rank, they said:

1. Toyota and Honda
2. Subaru and Nissan
3. Everyone else

More recently, I've read news reports that European cars have gone down and
American cars have gotten better, but I don't know how much, and that Subaru is
thought to be as reliable as T and H (Edmunds.com, New York Times).