V50 T5 SE - RATHER A LOT, FOR RATHER A SMALL VOLVO. (Volvo V50)

Name: Richada

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Product:	Volvo V50
Date:	05.06.06 (4771 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast. Comfortable seats. Low wind noise. Good colour choice available .

Disadvantages: Very Small Interior. Cramped Driving Position. Very Expensive. Many Expensive Options

Any of you who have read my previous car reviews will know that I am something of a Volvo enthusiast. Indeed, in a recent S60 T5 review, I described Mrs Richada and I, as frustrated "non S60 D5" owners!

The larger Volvo's, S60, S80 and V70 are without doubt near or at the top of their respective classes, indeed Mrs Richada says that the ONLY estate car she would be seen in is a V70. At the "bottom" of the range are to be found family sized (slightly larger than Ford Focus) saloon and estate models, the new, in 2004 at least, S40 and V50 models.

For those of you who are non Volvo aficionados, maybe a quick explanation of Volvo's seemingly odd, but in fact quite logical (in Sweden at least!) model nomenclature. S, quite naturally stands for saloon, or if you are reading this in America - sedan! V is maybe a little more obscure, in Volvo speak it represents "Versatile", a new spin on the famous Volvo estates of old.

Just to make things a little more puzzling, rather than having a V40 and an S40 (as was the case with the old models here) the V40 is a small to medium size four door saloon, whilst the V50 is the same car with an estate rear end. In terms of engine choice and trim levels the two cars run parallel - the estate being approximately £1000 more expensive model for model.

The range starts at £17955 for a V50 1.8 S and finishes with the subject of this review - the V50 T5 SE Sport, retailing at a not inconsiderable £26820.

The old S40 and V40 models were always above the norm in terms of style and particularly internal space. However under the skin they were identical to, and built alongside, the lack lustre Mitsubishi Carisma, not really a proper Volvo then. As with the Carisma (which never improved much), when launched the V40's were inadequate dynamically, Volvo remedied that a couple of years later with the almost identical looking "mark 2" version which had class best rivalling ride and handling qualities.

For the new V40 and V50 Volvo knew, dynamically at least that they were on to a sure thing! How? Well since the original V40 was developed Volvo had come into the money - lots of it! Not only did Ford's take over of Volvo plough Detroit $ millions into the Volvo development coffers, it also handed them on a plate a rather good building block - the Ford Focus!

Volvo hit doubly lucky as although the first Focus was right first time, the chassis on which the V40 & V50 are based is the newer and larger mark 2 Focus, launched some months after the Volvo. Focus has two big advantages over Carisma, firstly in any version it is superb to drive and secondly it has a remarkably spacious interior. I have yet to write my first Focus review, but fear not it will appear on a screen near you very soon!

Oh this should be good! Here am I a Volvo enthusiast and a great admirer of the Ford Focus, this new range of Volvos should just about prove my ideal set of wheels then…….

…….Here Mrs Richada and I are at our favourite day out; Company Car in Action at the superb Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire. You may just have seen this place on "Top Gear". We are not here to see how fast any of the cars will go, there is a 100mph maximum speed limit on the circular track for non-professional drivers anyway. This is however the ideal place at which to assess a large number of cars on a huge diversity of road surfaces, corners and severe gradients that you would have to drive many thousands of miles to find under ordinary, every day, driving conditions.

It was fairly late on in the day when we took out the Volvo V50 T5 to try, having already driven their XC90 and S60 models, both of which I have already reviewed - very favourably!

In June 2004 the, then, brand new S40 and V50 took up most of the stand space at Volvo, hence only one S60 and S80 being on display. As this was another model being launched to fleets here, it seemed a shame not to take the opportunity of trying it. In terms of cost, if not size, it is fairly closely comparable to my company owned Honda Accord, at least that is what I thought until we walked up to the V50, key in hand!

After a very enjoyable drive in the most powerful S60 saloon model, faced with a vast choice of S40 and V50 models to try, the most sensible thing to do was to choose the most powerful of either available.

'Our' car turned out to be a pale metallic green V50 (Estate) T5 Sport. The hardest thing to come to terms in relation to this car is its' size, rather the sheer lack of it. This is a very small car, both inside and out. Do not get me wrong, when we chose our cars we are not looking for the most metal for the money, I am all for the quality rather than quantity school of thought but really…….

……..The £26,800 price ticket - plus this car carried well over £2500 worth of optional extras on top of its standard price - took some swallowing, bearing in mind that it is no bigger than a Golf and certainly not as spacious as the Estate version of the outgoing model. This car that we were about to sit down in was dangerously close to £30,000 on the road - well above my company car budget, that is for sure!

Joking apart, £30,000 buys you a lot of car even in 2006, on the face of it at least this is not a lot of car.

Running costs will fall into line with Volvo's pricing rather than the size of the car too. Insurance, as you would expect in a car as quick as this one, is group 15 (there are 20 in all). Fuel consumption is not exactly light either, budget on around 27mpg overall.

It had better be pretty damned special to drive then!

Of course styling is a very personal thing. People still generally associate Volvo's with the brick like estates that they used to be so good at. As with a company like Skoda it takes many, many years to shake off an ingrained image. Volvo is a marque that you now have to open fresh eyes to. Go to your nearest dealer and have a look at their cars on display, you may well be in for a big (small in this case!) surprise.

Personally, and unusually, Mrs R. shares my view on this, I think that Volvo are now selling some of the best looking cars on the road today. The whole range hits exactly the right note: slightly sporty, definitely professional, yet still with a good solid "safe" image too. Yes we like the look of these new Volvos, no doubt about that. They also happen to come in some very fetching colours, something that not all manufacturers seem to offer these days - a decent colour choice.

On opening the door of the V50 (or an S40 of course), you find yourself looking at a genuinely unique interior. What makes it so? Well, it has what Volvo call a "floating" centre console, a flat aluminium panel with space for a bottle holder behind. However the rest of this very small but immaculately trimmed black leather interior hardly justifies a £20,000+ price tag, I will remind you again that this particular car we are now sitting in would cost you almost £10,000 more than that!

My wife and I, neither of us are very tall (I'm 5ft 8in, she 5ft 4in) honestly felt cramped in here. Due to its upright driving position, the tiny Fiat Panda had felt much more spacious inside.

Fortunately, unlike in a Renault Megane for instance, I am able to find a very comfortable driving position, thanks in part to the (optional) electrically adjustable drivers' seat. However you are sitting fairly low and aware of heavy roof pillars rather too close to your head for comfort and further increasing the impression of claustrophobia.

All of which is a bit of a pity really as the new small Volvo is actually very good to drive - as you'd expect of a car based on the latest phase 2 Focus. However does that not beg the question that a far more spacious Focus, saving many thousands of pounds is going to be a more sensible purchase?

It also begs the question as to why the V50 is not so much more spacious in the first place, nobody ever called a Focus cramped, especially in the particularly practical estate version, which in the interests of this review we actually test drove immediately after returning the V50.

I digress, jumping the gun - with this particular V50 having a power rating of 220bhp - it will be some time until Ford brings such a powerful Focus to market - when it does so there is no doubt that this chassis can handle it. This, in truth, is the first Volvo which is capable of offering a class leading ride and handling set up, Volvo have for some years now managed to get their cars to ride well but always at the cost of ultimate driving pleasure. On the hill route the small estate showed a degree of over firmness which was more heard than felt (in a remarkably similar manner to the original Focus Estate - an ST170- also driven on the same day).

As with any other Volvo that I have ever driven, the seat and driving position were beyond criticism, with a slightly less extreme road surface this is a very comfortable and enjoyable car to drive. The more you drive the car, the harder you push it into the corners the more you appreciate the excellence particularly of the seats.

Whilst not quite as fast ultimately as the more powerful S60 T5, the V50 T5, with this 2.4 Turbo engine is very swift indeed, almost frighteningly so in a car so small. On the banked track it sat rock steady at 100mph, slipping through the air silently like all the other Volvos driven here recently.

Wind noise suppression is one area where Volvo really lead the pack by a very long way. You will not notice how much wind noise your car makes until you drive a modern Volvo. Wind is one of the most tiring sources of noise in a car, especially in motorway cruising, I have driven just about everything on the market over the last three years and top to bottom of the range Volvo offer just about the most refined motorway experience that you will find.

Returning specifically to the V50 T5 Sport, one can only conclude by saying that this is a really odd car. I have thought long and hard about just who this is going to appeal to. It is small and cramped inside, rear seat and load space, even in this estate version, are pitifully lacking.

However you look at it there just does not appear to be a market for a 220bhp estate car with less room inside it, than in a decent supermini. Add in that ridiculously ambitious asking price and you wonder just who is going to buy such a car. Maybe in its bottom of the range form at £18,000 it makes more sense - but then you would be far better off purchasing the much more spacious, new generation, top of the range Focus for around £2000 less.

Yes we could drive to Poland in it, much of our luggage would have to stay behind. Once we arrived there, no more than two (small) family members would be able to come out with us in it. No this Volvo makes no sense to me at all.

Summary: The V50 offers a very good drive - but at what cost!?

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