Aston Martin fans will fondly remember the Superleggera badges on the DB4 and DB5 of the late '50s and early '60s. Then it stood for an exotic (for the time) Italian-developed ‘superlight’ coachwork construction method using custom tubes and alloy body panels. Today’s shed, a Volvo XC60 D SE 2.4 Superleggy diesel, is a little-known variation on that theme. There’s nothing light about it apart from the number of owners, which is one. Multiply that by 369,000 to reach the number on the odometer.
Shed believes this is the leggiest vehicle ever to feature in this virtual space. You’d never know that from looking at it though. Pics on a screen don’t tell the full story but the condition seems remarkable for the mileage with no visible rips in the leather and no obvious bangs or scrapes apart from a small one on the nearside rear wing. The cambelt was changed three years and 68,000 miles ago, so officially it’s got a good 30,000 miles of life left in it. The dealer has done his best to put across how nicely it drives. He also says there’s no rust, and that’s backed up as much as it can be by the MOT history, which is pretty much all about consumables.
All this should surely reassure any potential buyers of this model. That group doesn’t include Mrs Shed, because by complete coincidence she has already purchased a very similar gen-one Volvo XC60 2.4 diesel. Obviously her XC60 isn’t a common or garden SE. Hers is a Lux, the toy-rich spec which includes a two-part – or four-part if you count the sliding headliner panel and the wind deflector – sunshine roof.
Shed would very much recommend you steer clear of this spec. Two weeks into her ownership experience Mrs Shed noticed that the passenger side carpet was under about half an inch of water, that the roof operation had become patchy, that a brightly coloured array of warning lights and urgent messages had sprung up on the dash, and that water was dripping off the sunroof control panel and onto the packet of mini pork pies that she likes to keep next to the gearshift lever for emergencies.
In a rare moment of panic-inspired lucidity Shed remembered that XCs from around this time did have a reputation for leaky windscreens and that many of them were fixed for free well after the expiry of the warranty. Hoping for the best, and being a fancy-free kind of guy (which is to say that if it’s free he fancies it), he booked the car into the local-ish Volvo dealer for leak testing.
Unfortunately, this test turned out to be a fun way to spit out a £115 invoice (Volvo’s current hourly labour rate in rural Wales) as it showed there was no windscreen problem. The nice Volvo people did note in the course of their expensive musings that the sunroof control switch contacts were somewhat corroded, so sometime in the next few days the car is going in once more for further investigation which, Shed is glumly guessing, will eventually reveal blocked sunroof drains just as soon as those investigations have generated a suitably impressive involce figure.
Needless to say, Shed is not best pleased by all this and wishes that his dear wife had thrown her hat in for this week’s SE instead of the Lux that lured her to her doom, or Shed’s as will inevitably be the case. He has never understood the point in removing a large and perfectly serviceable section of a car’s roof to make way for a massive source of problems going forward, or indeed backward, as Mrs Shed’s XC60 leaks in reverse too.
But let’s not paint this week’s offering with Mrs Shed’s dirty old brush. Blessed by Trigger’s broom and the love of a single owner it looks like a good ‘un. The MOT runs out next month, the only issue on last November’s test being an obscured view of both rear seat belts caused by the careless placement of a child seat, an honourable advisory for any Volvo XC surely. The steering system was described as ‘slightly rough’ at 182,000 miles, a point it reached eight years ago. Sure enough, Mrs Shed’s car has this symptom too, albeit at a much more sprightly 110,000 miles. A new rack, if needed, will cost about £1,000 from the Volvo dealer if Shed isn’t able to find one cheaper elsewhere. Then there’ll just be the ABS, City Safety and Airbag Service Urgently Required warning lights to extinguish. Gah.
Despite everything Mrs Shed loves her new old Volvo. She loves its solidity, its stance, its ‘stereo’ and the gravelly thrunge of its turbo five-pot diesel. All of this, minus the sunroof-related troubles, can be yours for just £1,995. You won’t find many, or probably any, other XC60s at this kind of money. We couldn’t. The next cheapest one we found was a 2.0 D4 with an engine knock at £2,245, which sounds about £2k too much.
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