2010 Volvo V50 R – dad wagon

The Story

I was looking for a family car and a friend sent me this manual, turbo wagon and I immediately fell in love. It had pretty high mileage (160k) when I bought it but I don’t do a lot of daily driving and it’s a Volvo so that didn’t bother me. It had meticulous dealer-stamped service records up to 125k miles but the second owner really didn’t treat it well. The paint was covered in water spots, all the badges were faded or cracked, center caps were missing, and it looked like somebody had been driving it on dirt roads daily. Fortunately it came from North Carolina so there was no rust. My first task was getting back to stock - or doing my best to make it feel like new. I fixed all the broken or worn bits including the steering wheel and shift knob with stock parts. Then I started making it a bit better. I upgraded to OEM wheels from a the P2 S60 R with better tires and added a very stiff rear sway bar. I upgraded the rear rotors to 302mm which came with Ford Focus RS that was developed in conjunction with this car. I also added a boost gauge and short shifter. I just paint-matched my roof box because you can’t have a wagon build without a roofbox. I've installed 3" turboback exhaust and upgraded the wastegate. The only thing left on my list is the tune. I should be getting close to 300hp with all that and that’s about where I’ll leave this build. Thanks for reading.