ilPistone.com

courtesy of times online:

And this brings me nicely to the door of the Volvo C70 T5 SE Lux. Possibly the most disappointing car in the history of the universe.

Like so many new cars these days, the Volvo C70 has a hard metal roof that slides electrically into the boot. That sounds great but there is a problem: the boot has to be at least as long as the roof, and because of that no car maker has managed to make a car of this type look right.

Certainly you should never operate this roof in public because it will cause those in passing cars to lose concentration and crash. And pedestrians to think you?re showing off. But whatever, it means the car looks sensational with the roof up and, dare I say it, even better when it?s down.

The steering is absolutely lifeless when you?re going in a straight line and horrid when you?re accelerating, braking or going round a corner. Powerful front-wheel-drive T5 Volvos have always had torque steer but this is something else. This is diabolical.

You can hold onto the wheel if you like, but frankly you may as well hold onto your knees or your passenger for all the good it?ll do.

Eventually I got used to it, in the same way that eventually you can get used to a headache. But I never had the confidence to open up the C70, to see what those 220 brake horse powers could do.

This was properly annoying because Volvo plainly has the ability to make this car work. They have the stylists and the engineers. But they built this car using parts from other, lesser Volvos. You can therefore think of it as supper made by Gordon Ramsay using only ingredients he could get from the 24-hour petrol station.

Volvo is owned by Ford these days and I can?t help imagining what this car would have been like if they?d accessed their daddy?s parts bin. It could have had rear-wheel drive from a Mustang or a Jag. A V8 engine. Some Aston Martin steering. It could have been wonderful.

But it isn?t. Volvo, plainly, has watched a television recipe for making a convertible. And then tried to copy it without going to the shops. Ingenuity got them to the table with something well priced that looks great. But I doubt you?ll want to dig in.

verdetto:

Rating 4/5
Verdict Clever and appealing, but a bit like  flat-pack furniture, not quite complete

;D ;D ;D