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Remember the Volvo 140 series and the 240s of years ago? Perennially favored either by older college professors with tweed coats and patches on their elbows, or by granola-eating Whole Earth Catalogue-reading types, they represented the ultimate in safe, sane, sober engineering. A little stodgy, perhaps even a bit boring, with its boxy shape doing nothing to advertise to potential buyers, “I’m really a great car; take me for a test drive.” Unless you were part of the Volvo cognoscenti, they probably were not on your radar screen when you were younger.
There was one car that broke the tweed-coat-and-patches mold in those days, however, and that was the Volvo 1800. A sporty-looking two-door coupe that found buyers beyond the demographics of its boxier siblings, its notable claim to fame occurred in the 1972 and 1973 model years, when its last variant, the 1800 ES appeared. This final 1800-series model sported a glass-windowed hatchback, which was unique styling for the time. Fast-forward 35 years, and everything old is new again. Volvo is introducing a new coupe this year called the C30. Interestingly, just like the 1800 ES of the early 1970s, the C30 sports a “glassback” hatchback, too. Targeted at younger buyers, this seeks to be the new entry-level Volvo for the 25-to-35-year-old crowd. Presumably, after tasting the Volvo waters by owning a C30, they will be ready to move up to bigger cars in the Volvo fleet in years to come. The C30 is based on the versatile Mazda 3/European Ford Focus chassis used also in the Volvo S40 and V40. But although Volvo raided the corporate parts bin extensively in producing this car, it radiates its own unique character when compared with other models in the automaker’s lineup. During a day of tossing the C30 around the twisting, turning roads of Mallorca, an automotive reviewer for the CanWest News Service noted that “this front-driver delivered on its ‘fun to drive’ promise.” Yet it behaved impeccably like a Volvo when the island roads, recently slicked by rain, proved too slippery to allow the car to go through the corners without automatically turning on the included electronic stability control to correct for understeer. From the experience learned in developing the C70 convertible, Volvo transferred some of that knowledge to the C30, resulting in a much stiffer body than one would expect in a car of this type. In fact, the base C30 rides much like an S40 Sport; and if you opt for the sports package, which adds a stiffer feel and drops the car by 20 mm (a little less than an inch), it’ll feel very sporty (without actually being a sports car). The C30 will be available either as a standard model or as the sportier T5, which ups the horsepower from 168 to 218; a choice of manual or Geartronic shift-it-yourself automatic transmissions is available. Volvo offers many different ways of personalizing a C30, from various audio systems to a palette of various interior and exterior color schemes. There’s even a body kit “that can be finished in a matching or contrasting hue,” according to the CanWest reviewer. Our take? This sounds as if Volvo is treading into Mini Cooper territory, what with offering a small car with appealing styling and a plethora of personalization options. But there’s room in that market segment for more than just the Mini, so we think it will be a worthy addition to a premium small-car-buyer’s shopping list.
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