Car: Volvo C30 D5
Prices: £20,110 - £21,360 – on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 14
Emissions: 151-209g/km
Performance: Max Speed 140mph / 0-60mph 7.8s
Fuel Consumption: (urban) 29.7mpg/ (extra urban) 52.3mpg/ (combined) 40.9mpg
Safety: Twin front and curtain airbags, WHIPS seats, side impact protection system
Dimensions: Length/width/height 4248/1780/1450mm
DIESEL DO NICELY
Our Rating: 7.6 / 10
Before you read the words Volvo and diesel and turn the page, it’s worth giving this one a second chance. Andy Enright reports on why the C30 D5 is something rather special
There are some people who will clock that this car is a Volvo diesel and give a brief involuntary shudder. I used to be of that persuasion. My father owned a Volvo diesel so unrefined that these days he would have been slapped with an ASBO. I can even now recall the sound of that engine firing up in the morning. There was the first clonk of the key, followed by the pregnant pause while the glow plugs warmed up, followed by the sort of noise you’d expect to hear at the back of a Waltzer. Things are a good deal different now and Volvo’s latest C30 D5 shows quite how much things have changed.
Where Vic’s old 760GLE had just 124 asthmatic horsepower to lug around a car that weighed more than the Eurasian plate, the C30 D5 has a spry 180bhp to power a car that’s neat, light and compact. Three trim levels are offered, opening with the SE and R-Design. Then come the fancy SE Lux variants topping off the range. All versions are supplied with the Geartronic five-speed transmission. This offers the convenience and smoothness of a proper automatic gearbox equipped with a torque converter but also adds a little sass with the driver able to select gears sequentially.
The D5 diesel engine is a modern common rail 2.4-litre unit with five cylinders and is mounted transversely across the front of this C30, driving the front wheels. It’s probably the most appealing engine in the whole C30 model range offering decent economy and even more torque than the storming T5 petrol engine (350 vs 320Nm). It makes this peak torque figure at between 1,750 and 3,250rpm which mean that you won’t need to rev the engine to kingdom come to get decent punch from a standstill out onto a roundabout or when zipping into fast moving motorway traffic.
From a standstill you’ll need just 7.8 seconds to get to 60mph and unlike most performance figures you read in magazines that are the work of skilled road testers with zero mechanical sympathy, Volvo’s Geartronic box will allow you to replicate this sprinting ability with metronomic efficiency. Just stand with your foot on the brake until you can feel the gearbox start to strain against the torque converter, lift the brake and bury the throttle. The C30’s traction control systems and gearbox software does the rest. You just sit there, steer and make sure you don’t accelerate into something that’s going to spoil your day.
Where conditions allow, the acceleration only lets up with 140mph showing on the clock, a decent performance for a diesel in this bracket. Fuel economy is predictably good too, with an urban figure of 29.7mpg, an extra urban showing of 52.3mpg and an overall figure of 40.9mpg. These figures may not be quite so easy to replicate. An attractive carbon emissions figure of 182g/km will also put the C30 D5 on the wish lists of many company car user choosers granted a £25k budget. Well worth sneaking onto the options list and past the gimlet eye of your fleet manager is the Premium Sound system which features a digital 5x130w Alpine amplifier with Dolby Pro Logic Surround Sound and no fewer than ten Dynaudio speakers.
So much for the nuts and bolts of the C30 D5. What is it and who’s it aimed at? Based on the chassis of the S40 saloon, the C30 takes Volvo’s contemporary design direction and smashes it out of the park. If you’re still not quite comfortable with the concept of a sexy looking Volvo, this one will leave you wondering exactly when the sands of motoring fashion shifted under your feet. The latest models are sharper dressed still thanks to a reasonably thorough facelift.
This is the fourth car spawned from the S40 platform, the others being the V50 estate and the C70 convertible. Volvo had long earmarked this fourth model but weren’t quite s
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