Volvo V50 T5 | Shed of the Week

Has anybody here ever had a barn find? Shed found an actual barn a few years back which he now uses for postal activities, but the last motoring barn find he can remember was the ancient village midwife’s ‘old Italian car’ that she wanted him to buy off her. It turned out to be her long-deceased husband’s Dino 246 that had lain unwashed in a spidery garage for 38 years. Best £100 Shed ever spent, and well worth the hour it took for him to beat her down from £200. 

The trouble nowadays is that even the daftest dealer knows an interesting and/or valuable motor when he, she or it sees one. Or do they? Every now and then something pops up on Shed’s Amstrad screen (also unwashed for 38 years) which makes him wonder if unaware sellers are still out there. The something in this case being a Volvo V50 T5 with no apparent problems and a temptingly low asking price of £1,795. 

It might not be valuable, but it is interesting. V50s of any description have only featured three times in SOTW over the last who knows how many ten-plus years, and two of them were diesels. The other one was actually a T5 like this week’s Shed, which with its warblesome Focus ST 2.5-litre turbo five is about as far from a diesel as any car could be. The earlier T5 was even cheaper than this week’s example at a bargainaceous £1,250. The catch was that it was overheating. Thermostats do go on these, and head gaskets aren’t immortal on any car, but the cylinder liners are known for cracking on these engines. It must have been something of that nature because four months later it failed its MOT and that, presumably, was that.

This week’s Shed, a more appealing manual, could be different. Its last MOT test was in January when a pair of tatty CV boots was noted along with the enigmatic and slightly scary-sounding ‘electronic stability control component slightly damaged’, an advisory with which Shed remains totally unfamiliar even after twenty minutes of furious DuckDuckGoing all over it. Of course, it may be that the dealer knows full well what it means and that is why the car is going cheap.

Out of the box the V50 was stylish but not perfect. Volvo tried to keep it compact, which was a good idea for boosting its appeal against its main rival the 3 Series BMW, but the narrow body they gave it to help it achieve that goal created stupidly skinny door pockets that were about as useful as a bagpipe player on a meerkat hunt. V50s weren’t massively roomy as estates. One PHer wittily characterised the T5 as a kind of Focus ST for miniature antique dealers. It wasn’t clear if he meant miniature antiques or miniature dealers. 

Although the T5 versions of the earlier big Volvo estates were properly worthy of the badge, the 220hp/236lb ft V50 T5 was actually outshone by the 2.4 D5 diesel in terms of real-world performance. Peak torque on the petrol came in at just 1,500rpm, a gaping 3,500rpm short of the infrequently attained power peak. Handling wasn’t that great unless you had the strut-braced sporty model that Shed thinks might have existed at some point. On the plus side the V50 T5 was an excellent cruiser. 

Pre-2007 V50s are known for ignition key troubles. The plastic keys looked cool at the time but there were many ways in which they could annoy you. Turning the key didn’t always result in engine ignition. Sometimes, turning it back wouldn’t stop the ignition, cooking the coils until the battery was nice and empty. As a final act of defiance the key could get stuck in the slot, a problem which led to a five-month backlog of keys in 2006. 

Eighteen years on you’ll pay £415 for the dubious pleasure of taxing it. If the last owner was incredibly mean you might need a bit more money to replace the tyre which, according to the MOT, had an ‘offside rear nail’. Shed had no idea that football rules were being applied to MOTs these days, although having said that he is all too aware of Mrs Shed’s willingness to give him a free kick in the penalty area.