2016 Volvo V40 D4 Auto. Any good?

[CJ1]

Hi all,
My father has just sold his 2018 BMW 640i and is now on the hunt for an economical runaround. He’s not into cars at all.

He originally was looking at going down the electric route but he only likes the E Niro and they’re not available until March (he was going to lease one through his company).

A V40 has popped up local to us, it’s a 2016 V40 D4 Auto. On 45k miles. He will use it mainly to nip around town with the occasional longer trip to Gatwick once a week (50+ miles) he does circa 10k a year. Are these good engines? We had a 2006 V50 2.0d which was the PSA one and it wasn’t the best, I understand the 2016- D4 is a new Volvo engine? £20 tax is a big draw for him as his 640i was £500 a year!

Any feedback or tips appreciated!
Thanks
CJ1

[Whataguy]

I was originally looking at the 4 cylinder D4 models but they can have issues with the emissions equipment.

There are 245+ pages of problems with the newer D4 on the owners forum:

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=22...

A great alternative buy is a 5 cylinder D4 up to mid 2014 as they are classic Volvo engines and don't suffer the same issues.

You can also get a 5 cylinder D3 of a similar age and polestar tune it to a D4 to get the same performance as it's just software. It's what I did and am very pleased.

I'm getting consistently 45mpg average and 47+ on long motorway trips. 0-60 for the 6 speed auto D4 is around 7.7 seconds so reasonable performance.

Road tax is the standard £150 odd.

Mine's a 2014 and build quality is equal to the 2011 Lexus IS250 I used to have.

Edited by Whataguy on Sunday 25th October 08:23

Edited by Whataguy on Sunday 25th October 08:37

[jamei303]

I do 10K a year and my last car was a petrol V40 - very happy with it but I wouldn't have dreamed of getting the diesel for that usage. The tax difference is nothing when compared to the potential maintenance costs.

[Whataguy]

I wanted a T5 originally, they're great but 25mpg vs 45mpg is a big difference.

As a service loan car I've had a T3 auto which was fine but still only did 32mpg.

The unicorn car if you can find one is a T5 cross country automatic - something you could keep for decades and not care about mpg.

The older volvo diesel engines don't seem to suffer from the maintenance issues of the newer ones. I know someone with a 10 year old/110k mile D3 auto that has been run on the cheapest supermarket diesel you can find and has had just annual servicing.