yes indeed - 30 years ago we used to joke about the volvo I now drive as "a fantastic car to have an accident in", but dead boring
so back then volvo was happy to get market share from THAT image, ie market to the say 10% of people who [unlike me in my E Type Jag] were fine upstanding responsible people
not sure what changed but volvo DID redirect their marketing in 1990s - possibly because the world changed and the pool of responsible people was more like 1%
so volvo became the same as any "market driven" mainstream company and got more "fancy"
I think jury is still out on if this was a good thing, but I seem to get bad vibes via this forum re the no longer reliability factor of a brick
eg you talk of no idle after on expressway, and I have no such problem
reason involves mine is dead simple air flapper thing and yours is a DDC [direct digital control] algorithm that considers 16 sensors, crunches the numbers and decides to cop out
as a long time engineer in the service industry [not cars] the motto was if it aint broke dont f*** with it
modern marketing says you MUST f*** with it - ESPECIALLY if it works
in other words I would far rather be driving along listening to my IPod than getting some computer error code like I was back home in front of my computer
in fact I have even disconnected the 1976 vintage error codes of seat belt warning and light bulb warning [which even then gave false warnings]
life is too short to have such agro