After posting my Hyundai review, I realized I forgot to mention that there was a car chip shortage. An international chip shortage. This means that cars are in short supply and ridiculously expensive because the chips are necessary for most of the standard things we come to rely on in our modern cars. The beautiful lesson of supply and demand. This means I could pay $2000-$3000 more for a new car than I typically would because there is short supply. There is no haggling either because if you want to barter over a small amount, there is more than likely someone behind you that will pay the full price and then some. I’m mentioning this because it is something serious to think about during this car shopping experience.

Let’s do this.

The Volvo XC60. An SUV I always wanted to test drive. And why wouldn’t I? It’s a beautiful automobile and one of the safest in the world. And honestly I cannot remember the last time Volvo has had a major controversy.

Before I went into the dealership, or to any of the dealerships, I went to the manufacturer’s website and built my dream car, with all the packages and paint colors I could think of. This allowed me to not only see what I would potentially pay but also ways to save money by cutting out unnecessary items. Its a great tool if you want to test it out. https://www.volvocars.com/us if you are in the US.

For the Volvo, I went with the Momentum trim level because the Inscription and the R-Design are just to pricey for my wallet. They start at $50,000 without any additional packages, so I was immediately priced out. I built a XC60 with the Climate Package, and the advanced package. The climate package included the heated seats and steering wheel. The advanced package includes the adaptive cruise control and the garage transmitter. After all that pricing, the car total came to $46,995. This includes the destination fee of $1000. They even raised that pricing. Crazy.

So guess what?I did all that pricing and planning and there is only one Volvo that fits in my price range and it doesn’t check near as many boxes as I wish it did. It has no heated seats or steering wheel, no rain sensing wipers, or adaptive cruise control. And it was a loaner/demo. This was a hard pass. Seeing as it was the only version in the triangle, it seems that a SC90 is out of the question. No test drive and no Volvo in my drive way.

I’m sad I didn’t get to to test drive the car. I really wanted to see how I would like it. But in the time of supply and demand, the car market is unpredictable.