My wife was very happy with me.

[Ben]

V50 sportwagon attractive to younger, more active families

Sat Jul 2 2005

By Brian Harper

TORONTO -- My wife was very happy with me.
No, I hadn't put down the toilet seat. It wasn't her birthday or our anniversary, I hadn't bought her a present or picked up flowers (or even dinner). But, I had come home with a Volvo.

My wife loves Volvos. She sighs contentedly when she sits in one. She says she feels safe and secure, which should give all the folks who work for the Swedish automaker the warm and fuzzies because this is exactly the thing for which their company stands. She is a true believer.

Not so my 17-year-old daughter, the family arbiter of all things cool and an admitted car snob. What immediately got her nose out of joint wasn't the fact the compact-sized V50 in our driveway was a wagon, or even the base, entry-level model in Volvo's wagon lineup.

No, she plunked her scrawny butt into the passenger seat, took one look at the huge lump of black plastic that was her half of the dashboard and threw up her hands: "What's this all about?"

I shared her exasperation. One year earlier, at the V50 wagon's launch, I asked Volvo's chief interior designer exactly the same thing. He described the Spartan cabin as trying to convey the feeling of cutting-edge technical innovation rather than the typical IKEA leather-trimmed furniture look of past Volvos -- an effort to appeal to a younger clientele. I respectfully disagreed. So does the teen queen, though not with the same respect. Then, she started in on the unique, ultra-slim, high-tech centre stack that is the feature element of the junior Volvos (including the S40 sedan). The aluminum panel houses the audio and climate controls, the buttons arranged in the manner of a TV remote, thus supposedly intuitive for couch potatoes. Too crammed together, said she, not esthetically pleasing.

Like her, I agree the V50's minimalist interior isn't its best feature, devoid of any warmth and possessing interior trim that seems kind of downscale for a $30,000-plus car, even with $400 of optional aluminum inlays. I also have some specific issues, the first being the narrow footwell that places the accelerator uncomfortably close to the brake pedal.

Then there's the lack of heated seats as part of the $3,500 premium package (which includes leather seat surfaces and power driver's seat with memory), and the fact the visual display for the interior heat provides a sliding scale from cool to warm but no numerical indication of what the actual temperature is.

On the other hand, the front seats are quite comfortable and there is plenty of legroom and headroom for those of us over six feet tall, while the back seats aren't so shabby for a couple of statistically average-sized adults, either (credit the sculpted-out front seat backs).

If the interior is kind of disappointing, the same can't be said for the rest of the car, which, frankly, charmed the socks off me. What added to this amazement was the fact that the V50 tester was fitted with the base powertrain for front-wheel drive V50s -- a normally aspirated 2.4-litre, DOHC five-cylinder, good for an adequate if uninspiring 168 h.p. and mated to a five-speed manual. Spring for the sporty T5 and you upgrade to a 2.5-L fiver that's intercooled and turbocharged, delivering a far more muscular 218 h.p. and 236 ft-lbs of torque through a standard six-speed manual. T5 customers also have the option of adding a Haldex all-wheel drive system.

Yet, the 2.4-L engine doesn't mean the base V50 is a slug. The wagon will zip to 100 kilometres an hour in 8.6 seconds and, dropping down to third gear, pull off an 80-to-120 passing manoeuvre in 7.3 seconds -- both figures being respectable. But the in-line five is so smooth (at least until 4,000 r.p.m., when it develops a throaty tone) and the five-speed manual shift actuation is so light and precise that the V50 takes on a sporty flavour of its own. Add to that positive feedback from well-weighted steering and a four-wheel independent suspension (Mac struts up front, multi-link in the rear) that is skewed to be firm without being overly harsh. The body, which Volvo says is 34 per cent stiffer than the V40 previous wagon, is squeak- and rattle-free over things such as railway tracks and your typically poorly maintained secondary roads.

Brakes -- standard four-wheel discs with ABS -- will stop the wagon from 100 km/h in a little over 41 metres.

As for cargo capacity, the V50 provides a decent amount of room for its size. There is 14.4 cubic feet of space with the back seats up and the rear window clear, 25.3 cu. ft. with the seats folded (and the rear window clear) and 46.2 cu. ft. when loading to the roof panel.

Without hindering its reputation for safety, Volvo has managed to imbue a greater sense of sportiness into most of its sedans and wagons. Certainly, the V50 is a far more dynamic wagon than the V40 -- a rather bland model from Europe that never quite caught on in North America.

Joining the sportwagon renaissance headed by European automakers, the V50 will prove attractive to younger, more active families -- if Volvo's marketing efforts can succeed in weaning them away from their sport-utes. The T5 edition (with or without AWD) will probably get the glory, but there's much the base model offers, including a significantly cheaper sticker price.

And, I can think of one family member who'd be overjoyed seeing one in the driveway on a more permanent basis. As for the other one, well, we'll shortly be shipping her off to college.