Thank you all for talking the time to provide input and recommendations.

Wayne, I had no intention of using "Mother-in-law research" for this purchase decision, but given the number of vehicles available, I thought some help from my very knowlegeable Fodor's friends would narrow the field for me and it certainly has! I spent a day looking at American cars and notice not one person has mentioned an American car.
:-?

Underhill, what a fun idea! I used to enjoy those guys. I haven't listened in a while. I might give it a try.

Socialworker &amp; Gardyloo, we would <i>love</i> another Volvo, but servicing/running costs have been out of sight in our experience. In contrast, the Japanese cars seem to need very little expensive servicing. But I love the idea of a trip to Sweden. ;) Btw Doble, we have a 740 turbo and to my knowledge it was never the turbo or the engine we had problems with (until now). But I will look into Gardyloo's suggestion and maybe have a look at the Audi quattro. A friend actually mentioned that as an option and I don't know much about it.

I am not adverse to the idea of a European car. It's just the servicing/ownership costs seem to be so much more.

Sooo, if I were to restate the question, regardless of nationality, what's a dependable, low cost maintenance vehicle, good in snow that would replace a Volvo wagon, would there be different answers?

My answer would stay the same...Subaru Legacy Outback wagon. Drove ours (used) for a few years here in DC in snow and ice and it was fantastic. Only maintenance for it was replaced brake pads.

We have a second house in NH (live in NJ) from what I've noticed the Subaru Outback is the &quot;official&quot; car of NH. They are all over the place, no matter what people can afford, they have an Outback and LOVE them....snow, mud...

Another vote for Subaru. We live in NH, and just bought our 3rd Subaru, a Forester. We just sold our '95 Legacy wagon, which was the most reliable, practical car we ever owned. The Forester is slightly shorter, higher off the ground, more SUV like (but with no rollover issues), the Legacy was more car like. Either vehicle is great.

Not that you need to hear it, but here's another vote for the Subaru. My wife absolutely loves her Outback. And in the NC mountains, you see them all over the place.

Unfortunately Audi doesn't have an European delivery program. I was suggesting the Volvo approach because when we interviewed a bunch of cars 18 months ago to replace one of a series of Camrys my spouse had owned (nice car, but basically a kitchen appliance - it runs, you don't fix it until you get tired of it, which in my case took several weeks...) we looked at all the Subarus along with everything else.

When we lived in Alaska the Subaru 4WD wagons had just come out and were used and owned by everybody - it outsold every other vehicle in the state except Ford pickups that you could jack up, put a light bar on top, and stock with cases of beer and rifles for good times in the woods...erg. We owned one too and then another when we got back to the states. Nice. Another appliance.

Tastes differ. I think the current Subs are rather overpriced myself, but who am I to argue against success.

Volvo overhauled their maintenance and upkeep regimes, but I mentioned the freebie Sweden delivery trip because hey, this is a Europe travel board. When we picked up a car (a Snaab in our case) in a Euro delivery program some years ago the trip went straight to the top of the list of fun times (as of then) with a bullet. Fun when buying a car? Who knew?

I had planned to buy a Saab 95 wagon after returning to the US after living in Ireland, and driving a Saab 93, which I loved. However, the dealer I went to sold both Saabs and Subarus, and the salesman had me drive an Outback as well as the Saab. The Outback won hands down. Now, if Saab made a 93 wagon, I'd buy it, but I love my Outback.

mclaurie,

as you are now considering to take a look at Audi, I feel tempted to throw in a recommendation. I own an A3 and am enthusiastically convinced of its qualities.

Over here in Germany Audi has just passed Toyota in recent reliabilty statistics. And they have started a new campaign to become the industry leader in reliability and quality.
Over recent years they have already managed to become the benchmark in haptic quality and it shows.
Their driving performance has been increased significantly, too, and they are currently in close competition with BMW.
The Audi allroad quattro wagon is an understated all terrain vehicle with reasonably sporty on-road performance and excellent off-road qualities.
And the ordinary quattro models will most likely not disappoint you.
One downside may be that the loss in value in the U.S. is presumably still a lot higher than here in Europe, but then this might even be beneficial as you are looking for a used one anyway.
Another important factor may be that Audi has just introduced a new A6 Avant wagon over here which is likely to be on the market in the U.S. soon, too. This might lead to an extra loss in value of the previous models.

Ann21,

Saab has just started the production of a 9-3 station wagon and it gets quite good reviews for its sporty performance!

Regarding my coment on turbos. Mclaurie stated a wish for a used car and &quot;economical to maintain&quot;. If you buy a turbocharged car and sell it at 45,000 miles you will probably love it.

I will admit that this comment is from the 1980's but from the experiences (and repair bills) of four close friends, turbos fail (some at 60,000 miles) and with $1,500 to $3,000 repair bills. I knew one person who got one of these repair bills and did not even know what a turbo was. You are right, a turbo does not affect the dependability of the basic engine.

The normal operating speed of a turbo is 100,000 rpm. This is why turbos fail. In contrast your car engine spends 80% of its time at 4,000 rpm or less.

I was just trying to advise Mclaurie that buying a used turbo car might not satisfy the desire for economical maintenance. You can buy a used car for the cost of replacing some turbos.

For the record, just in case mclaurie decides to get a used turbo-charged Subaru, like a 2002+ WRX wagon - the turbo is readily accessible and easy to swap out. I know many friends who have gotten bigger turbos on their WRXs and it takes just a few amateurs a couple of hours to do. So, even if the turbo does fail, it's not that expensive to replace.

That's all...