[LEAKYSEALS951]

I drove a Tahoe in Texas once.
Even Texas wasn't big enough to contain it. I'm good with spacial relations. The Tahoe would fill a parking space like an aircraft carrier squeezing through the panama canal. If my daughter has even 1% of her mom's lack of spacial awareness, she has no business being at the helm. Even an xc90 seems big in that regard.


As for the Volvo- I have a xc70- not xc90, but some things are similar. The AWD system can give trouble from a number of places, so if she is going someplace that needs AWD, I would get something else. IF the AWD system gave trouble- I would just pull it off. It's not worth messing with if you don't need it. I ran mine without the AWD system for a summer and got about 2 miles more per gallon.

My 2005 has plastic headlamps- which I have to buff out once a year with rough cut cutting compound. Keeps them nice and shiny.

Make sure the transmission oil has been changed. If the xc90 has the same transmission, it can develop shifting problems. Make sure it isn't coming up for a timing belt change or something mileagewise. I would go for the lowest mileage one I could find for the sake of the tranny. It probably has never had the oil changed. Watch for hard shifts / or delayed shifts during test drives. During test drives- hit brakes hard (decelerating abruptly/ enought to cause a downshift)- then hit gas. That will trip a hard shift sometimes. Also decelerate through right hand corners, then hit gas. Basically, they can't downshift right and they engage the clutch too quick and it the tranny beats itself up.

The xc70 also has a cheesy plastic gas cap cover. I'm assuming the xc90 has the same. It's a joke.

I would hook up a code reader and see what it has to say. My car would have codes that wouldn't necessarily throw a CEL, yet, stuff would still register -particularly AWD codes.

Also- my xc70 has a broken sunroof computer, and alarm computer. So check the sunroof for operation. It wont show on the dashboard messages. The alarm system does.

For the money- you are probably fine, but yeah, I would look at a lexus too, especially from a manageable size standpoint for a new driver.

(on the bright side- it is a car (unlike some) that you can work on. They have been around long enough there are good resources for backyard mechanics. I just hit 190,000 on mine. )