Volvo XC40 | Mark Nichol 2020 Car Review

Every time. Knew I'd regret marrying somebody so tiny. In with a bang. Okay, so imagine you asked a car reviewer, what's the best new car on sale today? Pretty standard question. Now imagine that the reviewer goes, Volvo XC40, mate. What? Really though, I'm not building up to like some big controversial plot twist at the end of this. Like how turns out to be at the end of You can actually make a case for this, the Volvo XC40 being the best car that you can buy or lease today pound for pound. Before we get into all that, here's the bit where I tell you to hit subscribe and hit like and do a comment and all those engagement things that I'm supposed to do. But please genuinely do subscribe because from now on, Vanaroma is going to have the best car reviews on the internet because they're going to be done by me. What a big head. And if you're in the market for an XC40 or any other car, please go to Vanaroma.com and check out the brilliant lease deals that we've got there. Okay, obligations over. Let's get on with things. So why does the XC40 here have a legit claim to be the best family car on sale pound for pound? Well, firstly, it's because of the details and there are many of them and they are good. So if you think about car interior, right? Some manufacturers, they design the front bits of the car, the glory bits, the bits that everybody talks about and that you look at most of the time. And then they get to the back end and it's like they can't be bothered anymore, so they just stick a big hole in there. But Volvo didn't do that, right? So the XC40 doesn't have the biggest boot in the class by volume, but it is the most thoughtful and therefore probably the best. So it's not just that there's a twin level boot floor because that's quite common now, although it does make loading stuff a lot easier. But the adjustable part itself folds up to create this crevice thing so you can drop your shopping bags in and it'll stop them from rolling around. Really simple, but really clever. And then of course it has hooks and elastic to strap things in and a ski hole, stuff like that. But that theme continues up here, right? There are so many cubby holes, it's almost aggressive. There are storage spaces up here for like everything, including, right? So you've got this little box here and there's a net where you can keep a music circle. So there's Jimmy Neal, there's Ant & Dec, everything. Now you could maybe criticise the glove box for being a little bit on the small side because once it's got the manual in there, you can't get much else in. But other than that, right? This cabin plays out like a mobile storage facility for all your bits and all your bobs. Give me a little example, right? Down here there are two slots where you can keep, I don't know, IKEA family cards. You know, Sweden. But if this was all just about practicality, well, that's boring, right? Thankfully, this car is absolutely immense to drive. What? Why'd the music stop? Okay, I went too far. Thankfully, this car is great to drive. No? Okay. It's nice to drive? There you go. It's nice to drive. We'll come back to that though, because I think there's a discussion to be had about the looks for a little bit. In my view, this is about as visually arresting as it's possible for a small crossover SUV. So close. For a small crossover SUV to be. Small-ish. That's subjective, obviously. But in my view, it works because Volvo has kept the basic shape fairly simple and then added just enough detailing for it to be interesting. It's a very fine line, and if you cross it, it can be aesthetically problematic. Excuse me. Sometimes the details are a hindrance, right? And I'll come to that. But these front lights are a good example of detailing done well. Apart from the fact that Volvo has chosen to call them Ford's Hammer headlights, which is just weird. It looks nice anyway, in my opinion. I am aware that that is neither here nor there, because to your eyes, it might look like an absolute pig, and that's fair enough. Far less subjective, though, is the way that this thing goes about feeling like a much bigger car in a good way. So it does that SUV thing of sitting you high up in the cabin so you get good visibility in that sense that you're looking down on everybody else. Obviously, that's assuming that the other people aren't also in SUVs, which, let's face it, they probably are. And yet, it still feels sort of compact around you and fairly agile. The big car feel also presents itself because of this thing's fundamentally tremendous ergonomic qualities. As in, you'll get comfortable whether you're very tall or very short. It's been fastidiously designed, and it has touchy-soft, touchy-feel plastics in all the right places, as in up here and along here, but not so much down there. And then there's the infotainment, which has evidently been designed by somebody who has at least seen an iPad once, and that is not always the case with in-car infotainment software. Now, I know that some people don't like having a screen controlling all the main stuff, temperature mainly, but I think that's often because of a bad experience with a bad screen. And then there's the more fundamental issue of ride quality, which, in my opinion, this car gets bang on for the most part. So to give you a bit of context, that car out there that I'm driving is on 21-inch wheels. And because it's an R-Design spec car, it's on sports suspension, which is stiffer. In other words, everything you could possibly do to ruin the ride of an XC40, done here. And yet, apart from maybe a little more judder than you would want when the road's not very good, it's fine. Better than fine, actually. It's very nice, in fact. It's measurably comfortable. It's soft and it's calm. What that also means, of course, is that if you spec your XC40 with normal size wheels and the tyres have a thicker sidewall on them, and you get adaptive damping, which you can, it's optional, then the ride quality of this car becomes, and I don't say this lightly, luxury car comfortable. I'll roll that back a little bit. It's obviously not like 90 grand's worth of Mercedes S-Class or BMW 7 Series luxury car comfortable. But it is very clear that that's what Volvo is shooting for. And that's a good thing, right? Because very often, for reasons that I don't understand, manufacturers try to make these crossovers sporty. Yeah, that. These crossover type cars. You know the ones, right? Biggest and fastest growing segment in Europe. Statistically, everyone has two of these. That's a fact. Volvo has made this feel how it looks. Like a smaller XC90. Good move, Volvo. Because the XC90 really does feel like a proper luxury car. It's almost, almost like a Range Rover. In that sense that it's just big and plush and comfortable and domineering and all those things that you want when you spend that much money on a luxury car. And what that means is that the XC40 here feels like a rival to a smaller Range Rover. In other words, an Evoque. And also the smaller German premium SUV type stuff. You know, Mercedes GLA, Audi Q3, BMW X1. There are a lot of Xs now. But without the associated price tag, sort of. Yeah, interesting fact. So when the XC40 first came out a couple of years ago, the base model cost £28,000. And that put it very much in premium territory. Since then, Volvo has given us a £25,000 base model. What that's done is it's shifted the model into the sort of higher-end mid-range crossover stuff. Like I said, there's a lot of these. And in leasing terms, that means that an XC40 started comfortably below the £300 a month mark. And right, even though those non-premium crossovers are very good, especially the Peugeot one, they just don't feel as classy as this Swedish fella. Volvo knows exactly what a crossover is supposed to be. It knows what you buy one for. You buy it for all the boring day-to-day stuff that you have to do with your car. And its function is to make life easier. When you're doing that stuff, its function is not to be a sports car. If you ask something that's this size and shape, the big brake basically, to be sporty, then it can just end up being way out of its comfort zone and actually pretty unpleasant most of the time for that reason. This does lean a lot. Here we go. You see? Because it has to, because it's comfortable. But actually, when you put it into a corner a little bit quicker, it is not as messy as you think it's going to be. Loses grip quite quickly, but you kind of know that it's happening. That means it doesn't feel all horrible. It will rattle all of the stuff you've got ensconced in the car though. In fact, the most unpleasant thing about driving this quickly is not the way it goes around corners. It's the noise that the engine makes. I'll come to that. As I alluded to some minutes ago, the design of the C pillar means that there's a blind spot so big over your shoulder that you can lose a van in there. And not just any van, a double cab, long wheelbase van. I know vans, see? And then there's a bit more wind and tyre noise than you probably want for a car that otherwise feels this comfortable. It's pretty noisy around the pillars when there's crosswinds. Although that is a problem shared with a lot of these slab-sided type cars. I think this car's main Achilles heel though is the engine range. The engines aren't great, right? They're only okay. They do the job. And they are certainly the one thing that feels non-luxurious about this car. They're all pretty noisy across the board, the pedals and the diesels. And that's especially the case when you put your foot down. They kind of sound strained. And actually none of them are that economical really either. It definitely feels like it's been engineered for low speed, calm driving. Gearbox is as smooth as Fred Siriax at work. But it doesn't change quickly. So it's not like a snappy high performance type thing. Again though, that goes back to what I was saying about who Volvo's made this car for or what Volvo's made this car for. It's made for comfort, right? It's not made for going quickly. The steering is lovely and light and there's an airy feel in the cabin. And if you don't actually push the engine it's all calm and quiet and relaxed. It's coseting, right? Or whatever other word that you would choose to get across a sense of unfrenzied relaxation. Now, if you do want super high MPGs on paper at least, you can do that. But it is going to cost you. You see, you can get an XC40 with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain, petrol electric but that costs £42,000. And even though this is a whole other discussion which we can't really get into here plug-in hybrids can tend to be more of a benefit on paper for tax that is than they are in real life at the fuel pumps. Although having said that there is an all electric XC40 now too called Recharge. That thing is both fuel less and rapid. Now that is a lot more expensive. It's £52,000 for a kickoff but of course with an all electric car it's a different ball game altogether when it comes to tax and running costs, right? And that will go some way to cushioning the blow of the high list price. But if you're not quite ready to yet, you can get onto the standard XC40 ladder for a very reasonable price. You see, because of this car's pseudo luxury style you do get a lot of stuff included with the price even if you buy the £25,000 one. And because it's a Volvo it is awash with safety stuff including moose detection because, you know, plan for every eventuality. I mean, there are other crossovers with better individual qualities than this. Of course there are. The Peugeot 3008, much more fun to drive and a lot of crossovers are cheaper. And most of the Volkswagen group stuff they have better engines than this. And the German stuff has more prestige albeit that is a fluid and abstract concept. But apart from all those things best car on sale today overall. It's very comfortable. It's very practical. It can be all wheel drive. It can be part electric. It can be all electric. It's very reasonably priced. It's very high quality. You see, I've moved on to another hand. And also a basic fact that I've neglected to mention so far is that it does have a lot of rear space and that's obviously important if you're using it as a family car which you probably are. So again, I keep saying this not much gets close to it pound for pound. So there you go. We're done. Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel. We have plenty more stuff to come from now. Again, more detail on this car at vanarama.com. Please leave a like and a comment and all that stuff. I'll see you soon. Bye.