Faults:

New timing belt and water pump.

Minor electric faults, nothing serious.

Brakes renewed (discs + pads).

General Comments:

The V60 Volvo is basically an estate version of the S60 saloon.

Lots of space, good looking car in white. Classic Volvo style.

Great to drive, stylish interior.

1.6 diesel is not the fastest car in the world, but will easily do close to 60 mpg all day. As with any diesel, give it a long firm drive now and then to keep the injectors and DPF trouble at bay.

Love it. Can be expensive to fix, but don't let that put you off - it will return with reliability and durability if looked after. Find a friendly local mechanic and you cannot go wrong with these cars if you buy a nice example in the first place, service history is essential!

Faults:

A very reliable car. The only issue I had was with the radio, which seemed to either lose its RDS function or maybe the aerial was damaged, but whatever it was, it required manually retuning as you drive around the country. Also there was some chromed plastic trim around the top of the steering wheel boss which peeled and presented some sharp edges to fingers.

Despite the car having daytime running lights, you still had to have the dipped on if you wanted auto headlights when it got dark. It was such an ordeal to get it done at the dealer (needed it all day for any repair) that I just bought a bulk set and replaced them myself. At the service the Volvo would still replace perfectly good bulbs - computer said 'no' syndrome - it isn't hard to visually check bulbs, but there you go. So I would refit the dud bulbs before the service just save a perfectly good bulb.

General Comments:

A very nice car with excellent performance and economy, and I got around 43 MPG with motorway driving. On the downside, the boot space was fairly pathetic and even the interior was a bit cramped. Given it was based on the Mondeo, I don't know how they 'lost' all the space. The interior quality was good, but the digital dashboard looked like some 80s home computer, and they should have spent another 20p and got a nicer one.

The handling was comfort biased, but it always gave you a good idea of what the wheels were doing, but it was never sporty, but very comfortable. The interior lacked storage space, and there was a fairly useless void behind the central console, which seemed to be wasted space.

Another annoying feature was that the radio insisted on coming on when you started the car unless you set the volume control to zero.

The dealer was fairly awful and insisted they needed the car all day even for an oil change - lazy.