Volvo V70 (P3)

The Volvo badge appears on not just cars, but also semi trucks, heavy industrial equipment, marine engines, and even some jet engines. In 1999, Volvo elected to sell off the automotive part of its business, and the now-separate Volvo Cars was picked up by Ford Motor Company, becoming a part of their Premier Automotive Group alongside Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin. By 1999, Volvo's new flagship on their new P2 platform, the S80, had already been released, and development on the soon-to-be-released S60 and V70 midsize cars was just finishing up; these P2s can be regarded as the last "pure" Volvos, and Ford soon began leveraging its global reach to integrate the companies.

For an automaker, "integration" means shared parts and shared platforms, and Volvo, Mazda, and Ford of Europe engineers put their heads together in Ford's Cologne, Germany design center to co-develop the compact P1 platform, also known as the Ford C1 platform and the Mazda BK platform, underpinning the S40/V50/C30, European Focus, and Mazda3 respectively. As with the P2 platform underpinning multiple sizes of car and crossover, Volvo and Ford extensively re-engineered the new P1 compact platform to a full-size format. The resulting "EUCD" (European Class D segment) platform became known as the P3 in Volvo usage, and hot on the heels of the flagship S80 was the new generation of the V70 station wagon.

The V70 brought all-new engines to the table, not using any of Volvo's "white block" inline fives or sixes in the US, but instead offering a 3.0 turbocharged or 3.2 naturally aspirated "SI6" inline six, with both engines designed by Volvo but built by Ford of Britain. All engines were paired with the Aisin-Warner TF-80SC 6-speed automatic transmission, front-wheel drive on the 3.2i and with standard Haldex AWD on the T6.

The SI6 engines were specially developed by Volvo to fit transversely (sideways) in the engine bay of FWD cars, and they feature some unique engineering tricks to do this: the timing chain, accessory belt drive, and components like the alternator and A/C compressor have been relocated either to the sides of the engine (driven via special gears off the middle of the crankshaft) or to the "back" end of the engine, above the transmission and driven by gears off the end of the crankshaft.

In our experience, these "short six" engines are generally pretty stout, but they have an achilles heel: the brake vacuum pump. Above the transmission and driven by the camshafts, this pump often develops leaks from the o-ring where the pump bolts to the engine, and the oil dripping down can appear like expensive transmission or rear main seal leak when viewed from underneath. We offer both a reseal kit and new pumps for this purpose.

By the late 2000s, consumer tastes were moving rapidly away from the full-size station wagon, and the V70 was one of the last players in that market segment. The very similar XC70 sold in much greater numbers than the regular V70, so Volvo elected to discontinue the V70 after 2010. Fittingly, Volvo again became one of the last players in the full-size wagon market with the V90 in 2017.

Model information is based on the USA vehicle market. Other model variations may exist outside the USA.