Okay, another day, another compact SUV. It’s the fastest growing car market in the world
I think. So here we are inside the Volvo XC40. Volvo has, almost by accident, become an SUV
company, you know, it used to major on big estates and saloon cars but then introduced
the XC60 and 90, just recently re-introduced new versions of those and it’s now selling
more of those than it sells anything else, it’s just gone, ‘Oh my Goodness, we’re an
SUV company, er well okay here’s the XC40 then!’ So, it continues those bigger cars
themes, they are practical, they are spacious, they are sensible and they’re really stylish
and it sits on Volvo’s smaller platform, new for this car. What it is, they’ve got
two platforms now within Volvo, one for the big cars, one for the little ones, this is
the new one for the little ones. It’s fairly conventional, it’s mostly steel monocoque,
MacPherson struts at the front, multilink at the rear. Transverse engine driving, well
eventually, front wheels only and through a manual possibly but at the moment they’re
all four-wheel-drive with an eight speed auto so that’s what this is. And at the moment
they’re all sub 2-litre, 4-cylinder petrol and diesels but there will be EV’s, there’ll be hybrids,
all that stuff that Volvo is doing and will do quite well, so it’s quite big on the
environmental stuff, well as big as you can be in a 4.5 metre long, quite tall 2-litre
diesel car. This then is a D4 they call it, prices in the UK for all XC40’s start at
about £27,000/£28,000. This one, D4 momentum, so it’s 190 metric horsepower, 187 bhp which
will probably cost about £35,000 which is fairly middling. What’s it like? Well inside,
pretty nice actually, Volvo has been, it’s really majored on its interiors recently and
although this is yes, smaller and therefore cheaper and less premium than the big stuff,
it’s still designed pretty coolly. I mean some of the plastics, alright, are not up to the same grade
as the more expensive cars, I wouldn't deny it, but that’s to be expected isn’t it?
Pretty comfy in the back, adults behind adults will have plenty of leg room and knee room, the boot is not a bad
size, better than that, it’s got things like a folding boot floor, you fold up half
the floor and then it's got hooks built into the floor than you can hang bags on,
it’s quite practical, quite sensible and the exterior is kind of the same really, the
chief designer said he wants it to be something like a tough little robot and it is quite
muscly isn’t it? It’s quite cool, I can see where he’s come from, it’s a bit Skoda
Yeti-ish in a way that it puts practicality ahead of sort of coupe-ish style if you like,
there’s a certain honesty to it and I quite like that. By and large, you know, with a
nice big glass area, nice clean interior, touch screen, it’s quite a good touch screen
but sometimes a few dials would just do it better. But you know this is a good, sensibly
laid out, practical interior and to drive? Well, similar Volvo-ish theme really, the
ride is a little bit, little bit brittle around town, when you go over speed ramps or sort
of surface imperfections, just a bit brittle, it would probably be better on smaller wheels
and tyres than this, if I’m honest. As speed rises, it smoothes out nicely and body control
is and body lean and stuff like that, it’s given space to breath, it’s not a taught
sporting chassis but that’s alright, I think there’s room in a class where they try and
make cars dynamic even though they’re tall and they shouldn’t try because it just doesn't
work. They’re too big, they’re too tall, they’re too heavy Just let a car be an SUV,
let it put the ‘U’ back into SUV. The XC40 does that, I think rather well.
I've got quite a lot of time for this car.