"Just purchased an 86 DL 240 wagon. 214000 mileage on her now. Seems to be tiptop but it doesn't like starting below half tank o' gas."
"I'm looking to buy a 240 Volvo wagon. I'm willing to pay top dollar for a car in good condition. If I plan to keep the car for 10 years or more what kind of mileage is recommended?"
The 240 was replaced in 1992 by the 850 and eventually discontinued. As with the 240, Volvo made the boxy wagon its core 850 model, and the sedan was styled like a wagon with the rear end cut off. During its five-year production run, Volvo produced 1.4 million 850s, but the car never achieved the cult status of the 240.
The 850 and succeeding models marked the beginning of a two-decade long effort by Volvo to move away from its image for longevity and safety and elevate its name into a full-fledged luxury brand. With Volvo's small volume and a production base in high-cost Sweden, the move was dictated by economics and never really succeeded. The cars couldn't approach the level and features of their European competitors.
At the end of the 1990s, Volvo, still profitable, was sold. Ford, having already purchased Jaguar and Land Rover decided to add it to its Premier Automotive Group. Hoping to rebuild the company by spreading Volvo's engineering costs over its vast economies of scale, Ford paid $6.45 billion in 1999.
Ford (F, Fortune 500) pushed Volvo further up-market. The effort produced Volvo's first crossover, the XC60, a late but successful addition to the product line, and the S80, an undistinguished aspirant to luxury sedan status.
Ford also tried to adapt Volvo engineering to its own cars like the Ford 500 but found the results expensive and overweight.
The global financial crisis at the end of the '00s produced big losses at Volvo, which no longer fit CEO Alan Mulally's One Ford strategy. With deep-pocketed buyers in short supply, Ford sold Volvo in 2010 to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the parent of Chinese manufacturer Geely Automotive, for $1.8 billion -- less than one-third of the price it had paid a decade earlier.
Geely immediately poached VW's hard-charging executive Stefan Jacoby and instructed him to turn Volvo into a BMW competitor. Jacoby announced plans for a big investment in new models and promised to double worldwide sales to 800,000 by 2020.
Since then, Volvo has run into nothing but more bad luck. The Chinese government ruled that Volvo is still a foreign company since it is still incorporated in Sweden. That means Volvo is shut out of the $15 billion market for government cars.
Then Volvo discovered that it couldn't build cars in China on its own -- a necessity to avoid stiff import duties. Instead it would have to form a joint venture with Geely to operate the plant, plus create a separate Chinese brand for the partnership to build and sell.
Although there are reports that Volvo will position the brand at a lower price point and supply it with older technology, it is essentially setting up a company to compete with itself. To add to its pain, top designer Peter Horbury left Volvo and moved over to the partnership, where he will put his distinctive mark on the new brand.
