Volvo V50 – The Best of Both Worlds
Volvo V50 – The Best of Both Worlds
If you have a need for speed, but also have the more mundane needs like lots of space for kids, a ‘respectable’ looking ‘family’ type of car so that you can fit in with the neighbors, and perhaps have a wife who would disapprove of you driving around in a ‘sporty’ looking car, or perhaps have to share a car with your wife who sometimes have to take the kids to school, or go to market, then the perfect car for you to get is the Volvo V50. With the V50, you can give the impression of being a responsible citizen and good parent when your wife is around, and even let her take the car to market or send your kids to school, but let it rip when you are alone on the road.
Recently introduced by Volvo Malaysia, the new V50, is a ‘sports wagon’ built around the S40 platform, but with turbo-charged power and a stiffer suspension set-up to go with it. The V50 is actually the performance model of the lower range, and is designed to appeal to petrol heads. For some reason, Volvo have chosen the V50 station wagon to be the ‘sports’ version instead of the S40; perhaps they are riding on their past glory of the Volvo 850 T5, also a station wagon, that shocked the world by competing very successfully in the British Touring Car Championship in the mid-90s.
From the outside, the V50 is a great looking car. The ‘station wagon’ bit at the back blends very well with the rest of the body, making it look quite sleek rather than bulky. The 17-inch alloy wheels with the 205/50R 17 tyres, blend in nicely to give the V50 an elegant and ‘mainstream’ type of image. The inside is typically Volvo, leather all around, an excellent audio system that doesn’t need any upgrade, and with enough airbags and air curtains to keep the car afloat on a lake (that’s a joke, don’t take it too seriously).
Of course the usual passive safety features such as WHIPS (Whiplash Protection System), SIPS (Side Impact Protection System), plus the ISO-FIX Child seat attachment fitted on the rear seats.
In terms of active safety, there is the ABS (Antilock Braking System), which works with the DSTC (Volvo’s version of traction and stability control system), EBA (Emergency Brake Assistance
Under the hood lurks a 5-cylinder, fuel injected 2.5 litre, DOHC engine fitted with a light pressure turbo charger. Output is 220 horsepower at 5,000 rpm (tuning is mild, to preserve the ‘family’ values of quietness and smoothness), and torque is excellent at 320 Nm, peaking at between 1500 to 4800 rpm. Figures like these are not earth shattering, but they will get you places pretty fast. Claimed acceleration from zero to 100 kilometres per hour is 7.3 seconds. In our tests, with the air-conditioner on, our hand timers got it at round 7.9 seconds, close enough. Top speed is claimed at 235 kilometres per hour, and Ivan, one of our testers got the needle licking 240 kilometres per hour. Fuel consumption is rated at 9.6 litre per 100 kilometres in a combined cycle test, but in real world terms, a typical fuel consumption would probably be something between 12 to 15 litres per 100 kilometres.
Drive is transmitted to the front wheels through a 5-speed automatic transmission with ‘geartronic’ (Volvo-coined word meaning a manual shift option). When in manual mode, the good thing about the geartronic system is that it does not shift up when you get near the rev limit, giving the drive the option to hold the V50 in a particular gear. In automatic mode, the transmission is auto-adaptive, sensing your gearshift patterns and adapting to your driving style. These features give the V50 the best of two worlds, pampering the driver who likes to laze around in auto mode, while allowing the more exuberant types to get some real driving action.
On the road, the V50 can be anything you want it to be. Let your wife take it to market with your mother-in-law, and she will find that it drives like any other sedan, and she will like the instantaneous response to throttle very useful when she wants to overtake. If she doesn’t put pedal to the metal, she will probably never know that this is a sporty car.
In the mood to have some driving fun? Switch to Geartronic mode, and use up all the power it can make. The V50 will out-accelerate most cars on the road; it can hold its own against other cars of similar capacity, and will handle as well as cars that cost a whole lot more. The only price you pay at the end of the day is a little more in fuel consumption, but that’s it. Being a light pressure turbo, you don’t have the eccentricities that plague highly tuned sporty cars, although it is always wise to drive normally for the last two or three kilometers before reaching home just so that the system will cool down to normal operating temperatures.
Our test team, consisting of Ivan, Wendy and myself enjoyed the V50 very much. The electrically controlled power seat for the driver allowed each one of us to find the ideal seating position. The convenience of cruise control is appreciated greatly on outstation driving, it being logical and easy enough to use without having to study the user manual. At the end of a long journey, the V50 does not leave you fatigued. So if you have RM230k to spend, spend it on the V50.
