Buying a Car - Part 1
Everyone in Canada (and probably the USA too) wants a new car. If not a new car, then one maybe three or four years old. Everything you read online talks about financing or leasing. There's this obsession to own the latest, greatest, best things without worrying about actually being able to afford it. $300/month? Easy!
This threw me a bit initially, as there is so much info and advice on the best way to finance a vehicle that I thought there was actually some logic behind it. After a day or so of research, I remembered that these are just cars. The same reasoning applies here as it does in NZ, and people generally finance vehicles because they want more than they can afford.
With that settled we went on the hunt for an SUV. We'd decided on an SUV style car because of the options it would give us further in our trip. We're planning to do a decent amount of camping so something that would provide us with ample usable storage space with the option of sleeping in the back would be fantastic. We ruled out US manufactured cars because at the age and mileage we were looking at they tend to have dismal reliability records. Our options, therefore, were Japanese or European. Japanese cars have great reliability stats (in the SUV category especially Toyota, Honda & Nissan), but this is unfortunately heavily reflected in their price. For a Japanese SUV to be within our budget we'd be looking at late 90's, with 200,000+ km's on the clock.
Possibly against better judgement, we started looking at European cars. BMW and Mercedes also have terrible reliability stats in the age and mileage we're interested in, but it seems some particular Volvos are exempt from this criticism. The Volvo XC90 seemed to fit all our needs perfectly. Reviews were great, Volvo's safety records are incredible, and perhaps most important of all Jeremy Clarkson has owned three of them.
Technical bit
The XC90 comes in several configurations. Notably, three main engines:
- T5: 2.5L turbo 5 cylinder
- T6: 2.9L twin-turbo 6 cylinder
- 4.4L naturally aspirated V8
The 2.9L was immediately struck from the list, as it used a GM-sourced 4-speed transmission which was plagued with problems. The reviews of this variant are so bad that I'm surprised they didn't recall it. This left the T5 and the V8. Surprisingly, both engines get about the same highway mileage. The T5 is a bit better around town, but not significantly. The V8 (apart from the psychological impact of being a V8) had the advantage of being naturally aspirated so we wouldn't have to worry about a turbocharger shattering halfway across the Saskatchewan prairies.
The only hiccup that the V8 has is an issue with a bearing on a balance shaft which is exposed to the elements. To fit the engine into a space initially designed for an inline-5, Yamaha (the manufacturer of the V8) had to sharpen up the V angle from the standard 90° to 60°. This increases the difficulty of mechanically balancing the force of the pistons, so to make it easier they added a weighted shaft at the bottom of the V to counteract the vibration caused by the pistons. For important Japanese/Swedish reasons, the design of this shaft necessitated a bearing with one side exposed to the elements. Under normal operation this wasn't an issue, but if someone decided to wash down the engine with a hose, water could pool in a small depression next to the bearing and slowly degrade the bearing. Once this bearing seizes, the balance shaft has a major problem, and the engine effectively shakes itself apart. Luckily this was quickly identified and solved (they drilled a drain hole in the depression), so as long as we found a specimen with engine serial number > 6833, we were safe.
So began the hunt for a Volvo XC90. V8's are relatively rare and sought after among Volvo enthusiasts, so options are limited and move very quickly. After missing several advertised on Craigslist, we eventually found one being advertised by a Volvo & Subaru specialist on the east side of Vancouver. This particular car had been imported from the USA and had already driven 200,000kms. The price was great though, so it was top of our list for a while. We figured that if something significant broke, the money we'd saved on the purchase price could cover the repair (also we'd have the safety of a mechanical warranty). My only holdup was that the proprietor of the garage selling the car wasn't particularly keen on us taking it to a third party mechanic to get an inspection. They said it was a waste of time, and most other mechanics don't understand Volvos so would give us incorrect information. This didn't sit very well with me (obviously in hindsight it was a huge red flag, but when you're stressed about buying a car sometimes obvious things slip by), so we kept looking.
In the meantime, I did some research into the Lubrico warranty being offered by the dealer. The general consensus online was that under no circumstances should you ever pay for a warranty from this company, as they had a terrible reputation for doing everything possible to not pay out. I guess it's kind of obvious that a $300, two-year powertrain warranty wasn't going to be of outstanding quality.
Eventually, as we were on the brink of pulling the trigger on the 200,000km car, I received an email from Luke, the seller of a car I'd enquired about a few days earlier. Luke and his young family are Australian, and they were planning to leave the country the following week so were under pressure to liquidate the remainder of their assets. We test drove his car and really liked it. After ringing about 15 different mechanics, I managed to organise a pre-purchase inspection that afternoon with a Volvo specialist out in Surrey, about a 45-minute drive away. The inspection went more or less flawlessly (major issues were a headlight washer not working, and a comment about "braille parking"), and after chatting to the mechanics for a while, I decided that this was the one.
Follow along with the excitement in Buying a Car, Part 2!