Those Volvo 240s are good cars.... I would stick with a 1984-1993 model though. My uncle has had about 4 of these (sedans and wagons)- some with well over 200K - and have to be good cars to take the abuse he gives them. They ride a little stiff for my tastes, but they can be tuned with certain shocks to give them a smooth ride. The engines and transmissions seem to be bulletproof. I cannot believe how smooth the transmissions shifted on these cars, even the one with 247K miles.

There was a crash here not too long ago where a young girl was in a severe crash. She was in a late 80s Volvo wagon. From the looks of the car you would think someone would have perished in it, but she only had minor scrapes. Amazing. The crumple zones majorly crumpled, but the passenger cage was completely intact.

My uncle had a 1981 Volvo 240 sedan that had some fuel injection issues, but his 1986-1988 models were OK. The best one I think was a 1986 wagon. It had well over 250K miles and had been driven from eastern North Carolina to eastern Colorado on several occasions without and problems except the hubcaps on those models were prone to break. The car was originally gray, but for some reason he had it painted white. Its life ended when he went around a curve on a rural 2-lane and hit a tree that had fallen across the road. Appearance wise the car was fine, but it demolished the front suspension, so he junked the car.

I have never owned a Volvo, but I almost bought a 1985 Volvo 740 a few years ago. It had an inline 6-cylinder diesel engine that was a Volkswagon engine. At first, I thought it was something someone added in it (so I did not buy it), but later found out it was a factory option and regret not buying it, because I heard they were good engines.

I have never seen rust on these cars around here, but I have seen some 70s and 80s 240s on ebay from up north that were rusted pretty bad (especially on the undercarriage), so buy one from the southern or western USA or inspect closely for rusting if you have to buy a northern example. Remember that the airbag was added in 1990 on the driverside, making these cars even safer.

Good luck!