Specifications
Would suit:
Middle England,
Price:
£31 900 (about R376 000),
Maximum speed:
240km/h, 0-100km/h 7.6sec
Combined fuel economy:
About 9.1 litres/100km.
Few things remain as constant as we might wish. Kate Winslet looks like Uma Thurman these days and they've even gone and put Marmite in a squeezy bottle (if they think that's going to make it taste any better...).
It really does look like all we've got left to cling to amid the wreckage of untrammelled progress is Volvo.
Volvos aren't usually terribly sporty or dashing but they are safe and dependable - which doesn't sell magazines. If you believe the motoring media, Volvos are like the fat, asthmatic kids always picked last for the school football team, with BMW the team captain.
I, on the other hand, absolutely think Volvo makes some of the best cars in the world.
I'm talking about the real world where quality, safety, reliability, value and practicality supersede the ability to shred tyres, lap circuits or act as a substitute for penis-size comparisons down the pub. So, just imagine how great a genuinely sexy Volvo would be. It'd be a world beater, surely?
Well, here it is: the C70 convertible. It doesn't look awfully different from the last one which, admittedly, was a stinker of a car that shuddered over the merest pothole like that same asthmatic student during trampoline practice, but look closer and you'll notice that the new car is tighter, more elegant, meaner looking.
It's not easy to build a cohesive visual identity across a diverse range of cars (just ask Fiat, which is hopeless at it) but Volvo is the master. You know this is a Volvo at a glance.
The thing everyone is talking about, though, is the C70's awesome folding hard top. We've seen these things many times, of course, but we've seen fireworks before too and it doesn't stop us going "ooh" and " aah". And anyway, the C70's is a doozy, folding majestically into three parts - although this impressive pirouetting doesn't appear to have given it any more boot space than the usual folding hard tops.
Never mind, at least with the roof down you can better appreciate the exceptional quality of the interior and the peerless clarity of its controls. Volvo is building some of the best interiors in the world right now, with its trademark "floating" centre stack; simple, unfettered surfaces and minimised knobbage.
It's always made the best seats, and still does, which makes the inside of the C70 a very nice place to be.
Nobody expects a Volvo to drive like a TVR, except the bearded old farts and pimply teenagers of the motoring media who have criticised its "vague" steering and "woolly" handling (one thing that doesn't change, it seems, is the car journo's lexicon).
Human nature
It's true, the C70's steering is way over-assisted, but that only makes it all the more soothing and lovely as far as I'm concerned. If I want a sports car, I'll buy an MX5.
The Volvo C70 even went as far as to revive my faith in human nature as, moments we did out photo shoot, the photographer got the Volvo's front wheels thoroughly embedded in the pebbles on the beach (OK, I admit, it was me, but she put the damn thing there in the first place).
Within three minutes - and I am not kidding - two motorists had pulled up to see if they could help drag us out. Now isn't that nice? Or is it just the mystical, mind-altering magic of Volvo? - The Independent, London