Volvo V70 Cross Country

...friend a ride from his Volvo dealer to work. The Volvo dealer seemed to actually want to sell cars?! He treated me nicely, offered me a cup of coffee, and showed me all he had. He let me test-drive cars, take them home to show them to my wife and he called and called again to ask if there is anymore he can do. And then…there was this car in his showroom. Brand-new, black (ok) and all the features I wanted. Ready to go.

Now I am driving ...
...km. And guess what…so far, I am still happy. No…I have never been to repairs with it. It just works fine.
So let’s go a little into detail.
The XC70 looks a little bit old fashioned. But, so am I. This car still has some rough edges and no designer is going to tell me, that I have to cut off the top of my xmas-tree to get it in there, because the car looks more sleekly that way.
Yes…ma’am there is a lot of space in that car. ... more

It's now nearly three months ago, that I decided to get myself some new tires...together with some new engine, gear....so, I got myself a new car.
Actually I was looking for a new car for more than half a year. My last one was a BMW 7 series. I had that one for nearly 5 years and it brought me trouble from the moment I bought it.
It has been off to repairs seven times in the first half year of its lifetime, mostly to stop a very annoying noise emerging from the rear axis. And in the last months in my possession, I got the feeling; I have to exchange nearly any part that’s vital to the cars job of transportation. So, stop the monthly ₤700-800 of repairs and get a new one.

Ok, after this experience with the car itself and, I have to admit also a very bad service performance from the BMW dealer, it was clear that my garage won’t be the new home of an other BMW again.
So I was actually thinking of buying a Mercedes…as the car before the BMW was a Mercedes E-Class which was working nicely and without problems for 6 years. But, it seems, Mercedes is already making enough money without me. If I managed to meet one of their sales people (they have gone home early, come in late or have an extended lunch break), they seemed not to be very enthusiastic about making another ₤40000 in revenue. So I turned down the idea of helping that “buy the car and leave us alone” philosophy.
AUDI therefore treated me as if they were afraid, I am going to steal one of their lunch sandwiches, so no sirs no AUDI then.

I already gave up the idea of ever being able to get a new car, when I was giving a friend a ride from his Volvo dealer to work. The Volvo dealer seemed to actually want to sell cars?! He treated me nicely, offered me a cup of coffee, and showed me all he had. He let me test-drive cars, take them home to show them to my wife and he called and called again to ask if there is anymore he can do. And then…there was this car in his showroom. Brand-new, black (ok) and all the features I wanted. Ready to go.

Now I am driving this car for nearly three months and altogether roundabout 4000 km. And guess what…so far, I am still happy. No…I have never been to repairs with it. It just works fine.
So let’s go a little into detail.
The XC70 looks a little bit old fashioned. But, so am I. This car still has some rough edges and no designer is going to tell me, that I have to cut off the top of my xmas-tree to get it in there, because the car looks more sleekly that way.
Yes…ma’am there is a lot of space in that car. You can fold all the seats from the back to the front. So anything you load can go from the rear window right to the front window.
There is also some extra storage beneath the trunk floor, which also can be raised and includes a handy shopping bag holder.
Four knobs and an iron grid help you to keep all that luggage in place. So you don’t get killed by your own take away pizza after a harsh stop.
The rear middle seat can be converted into a comfy arm rest and of course you can cover your belongings in the trunk with a build in (but removable) canvas cover.

In the premium edition the seats are very comfortable, with leather, heating and some electrical engines to move it in your most favorable position, which you clearly will never find, because there are just too many ways to move them. You get two (huge) keys with the car to open and close it, turn on the lights and sound the alarm. And you can save a certain chair setting to each of these keys, so the car recognizes its driver.
It has (in my case) a diesel engine that does a 163hp and is shifted by an automatic gear, that is, of course, adaptive and can be changed to a manual mode. Ok, this is not a racing car, but you can move quite fast on most modern traffic situation that will occur in our days. And you get that with about 8ltrs/100km of fuel.
As it should be nowadays this car has every essential security feature and more. It hast lots of airbags, dtsc (or esp or dtc or whatever you like to call it) and an electronic 4weel-drive, called AWD. Well after all, the XC tells you that this car is supposed to be something like an off-roader. And actually it is a mixture between a station wagon and off-road-vehicle. It has the design of the V70, but it’s about 9mm higher then the V70 and it has two aluminum plates in the front and rear, in case you hit some rock, while going cross country. You also have a special silvery knob next to the left seat, so somebody driving with you, can “brace for impact” when you go off road. (Or in my case, anyway the way I drive).

All the instruments don’t give you a too modern looks, but they are easy to use. If you ever tried to change the temperature on a BMW 7-iDrive, you know, what I am talking about.

So, after all the techno babble, how is driving the car?
Hmm…that’s hard to answer. Very smooth, sometimes of course you can hear the engine and you certainly know, it’s a diesel. It’s easy to handle in all situations and even now in winter I never had any problems. We live near the Alps, so that 4weel-thingi comes really handy, as does the auxiliary heating.
I have to apologize for the bad use of the English language, but unfortunately I am not a natural speaker.
If you have any further questions or comments, you are certainly welcome.
 

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