Looking for a vehicle to provide good comfort and gas mileage for 1,000 mile trips, but would still work well to haul boats on the rooftop or pull a small half ton trailer with boat racks, when the “new” wears of the vehicle. Volvo XC70 is a bit pricey, but seems to have a good combination of long trip comfort, long flat roofline, station wagon storage, and rated to pull 2,000 lbs (3,300 with towing option). We tend to keep our vehicles ten years or more, so would appreciate anyone sharing their real-world experience with the XC70, particularly regarding gas mileage and reliability, or as a boat hauler.
Your best bet
is to post this question on the AWD XC70 specific forum over at http://www.brickboard.com
XC70
I’m driving our xc70 from DC to the Jersey Shore this weekend with a Caribou S and a Romany, so I’ll let you know. The short answer is that the Volvo roof rack is great, but it curves slightly following the car’s curve lengthwise. This means that the rack-mounted Thule needs some adjusting. Hm, hard to explain: Look at the car from the side and you’ll see that the roof is very slightly parabolic. The mounted J-rack has pads which tilt slightly away from each other following the parabolic curve, pretty much the opposite of the way that kayaks curve. I think that this can be solved. Also, storage capacity is excellent and we love the car. It competes with our Mini, which doesn’t really work with the 18 foot 'bou. (Ha!)
Not quite on point, but…
We have an XC90 rather than XC70, but FWIW I haven’t been thrilled with the vehicle. Partly it’s just because I’m stuck driving something that I don’t really like (wife wanted 7-passenger capacity and vetoed minivans), but it’s had more little electrical glitches and minor QC issues than I really think seemly in an almost-new vehicle that cost that much. Gas mileage is OK for the size of the vehicle but nothing spectacular. On the plus side, the seats are pretty good, the stereo is pretty good, and there’s a lot of space.