Saying goodbye to something, or someone, is never easy. Shed thought he and Mrs Shed had reached the parting of ways recently. As usual, it was due to a misunderstanding. To celebrate her well-known fondness for honey, Mrs Shed asked the village tattooist to inscribe her bottom with a bee on each cheek. Unfortunately, he thought she meant the letter b rather than the furry flying insect. Hopping out of the bath that evening, she bent over to display the results to Shed. He asked her who Bob was.
Smarting from the subsequent saucepanning, Shed hid in the loo. After manipulating his handheld device he found that the Volvo S60 saloon was finally saying goodbye to the British market. Or maybe not finally. Volvo is describing it as a temporary move, but let's be honest, history is not exactly littered with examples of discontinued cars coming back on sale. Can you think of any, or any that you think should have come back but didn’t? Or indeed any that should never have come here in the first place? If so, please start your own thread about it.
The V60 estate continues in the UK for now at least, but the disappearance of the S60 from our shores, if it turns out to be that, will be a shame. Some of you might be surprised to learn that Volvo's 3 Series saloon competitor was still something you could buy new after 22 years in production. After all, when was the last time you saw a new one on British roads? It's always been heavily outsold by BMW. Before any discounting that may very well take place, the retail price of the cheapest 2022 S60 right now is over £44k, which makes our shed look like decidedly good value at £1,495.
Admittedly this sky-blue S60 is a 17-year-old 2.4-litre diesel and not a spanking new 246hp mild hybrid petrol, but with 185hp and 295 lb ft from 2,000-2,750rpm it is no slouch. A good one will do the 0-60 in eight and a bit seconds and cruise all day at 140mph, or until the fuel runs out anyway. At normal speeds you'll see MPG figures beginning with a four and hear plenty of characterful sounds from the straight-five turbo. Injectors won't last forever and replacing them won't be a five-minute job, but apart from that, occasional problems with the central locking and cruise control, the unknown quantity that is the Geartronic transmission and of course the legendary girth of the turning circle, a correctly functioning S60 D5 will be a very agreeable place in which to while away the miles.
As is often the way with old Volvos this particular example – a facelift if Shed isn’t mistaken – is wearing its age very comfortably. There's some paint missing from the rear bumper but the rest of the bodywork seems straight. The cabin leather pulls off that Volvo trick of looking as tough as old boots while also being as inviting as your favourite pair of slippers.
The MOT on this car runs to March and is, like most of the tests we can see dating back to 2008, clean. There's been nothing noteworthy picked up since 2015, when somebody complained about a track rod. Everything else reported has been either normal consumables or nothing.
There's another goodbye we should remember: the one that Volvo Cars said to Sweden many years ago. Volvo Group (the multinational manufacturing company responsible for stuff like trucks, buses and boats) is still Swedish, but the passenger car operation has been Chinese-owned since 2010. So if you want a Volvo and heritage is important to you, it has to be a pre-2010 car like this one. You could do a lot worse.
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