Volvo

Large, boxy and seemingly dowdy Swedish car brand. The older RWD volvos (1800, 100 series, 200 series, 700 series, 900 series) will quite literally run forever with good maintinence, and time will tell if the FWD and post-Ford cars will keep that mantle of reliability. Although often bashed for their emphasis on safety, Volvo has been building surprisingly sporty cars for quite some time, such as the 740 turbos which had 180 horsepower in the 1980's (at the same time that the corvette only had 220 to put things in perspective). The performance of the R-line of cars has increased from adequate to BMW M-car challenging with the new AWD s60R and v70R models.