Volvo S40 Review & Road Test: Volvo S40 SE DRIVe Start/Stop (2011)

We have the Volvo S40 SE DRIVe Start/Stop in for review and road test this week. Is Volvo’s frugal S40 a quality car?

There was a time – when Adam was a lad and so was I – Volvo just made a certain kind of solid, respectable saloon car for solid, respectable middle class families to go about their solid, respectable middle-class lives in safety. Cars like the Volvo Amazon.

But it was the safety bit that was the USP for Volvo. A safety obsession that saw Volvo carve out a niche for itself as the ‘Safe’ car to have.

Volvo was way ahead of the pack with a plethora of innovations introduced on its cars long before the competition woke up. From laminated windscreens to inertia reel seatbelts, SIPS to child locks, Volvo was where mainstream safety started.

So when, as a young married man with a young family in the late ‘80s I wanted a car for my wife to ferry our brood, I picked a Volvo 340. A Daf under the skin and complete with rubber-band Variomatic gearbox, it was not a good decision.

The Volvo 340 had a bodyshell that was so heavy it could have been made from cast iron and a measly 4-pot lump that barely rowed it along, never mind hitting 60mph the same day you started. It had steering so heavy it saved you doing upper-body routines in the gym and a thirst for fuel that came as a real surprise. But smaller Volvos have come a long way since then.

This week we have the spiritual successor of that 340 in for review – the Volvo S40 SE DRIVEe Start/Stop – which is thankfully not a Daf under the skin with a rubber-band box. But it is a Ford Focus under the skin with a decent six-speed manual ‘box.

It is also Volvo’s eco-jobbie, complete with the usual box of eco tricks including start/stop, lowered suspension, gear change indicator, revised gearbox ratios, closed air intakes and low rolling resistance tyres. Pretty much the same mix you get from every fuel-sipping eco car.

That the S40 DRIVEe neither looks nor feels particularly like an eco version is to Volvo’s credit. It feels like a quality product, thoughtfully put together. It’s not the most dynamic looking Volvo – in fact the S40 is probably the most traditional-looking of the current crop of Volvos – but it looks good enough in a sort of solid, traditional kind of way.

The interior feels a cut above the mainstream with its floating centre console complete with four big, well-labelled knobs (‘Wonderful’, cried Vince, our in-house, now going-blind, middle-aged staffer ‘I can read what they do.’), plenty of room up-front and enough in the back to be usable, if not quite enough to party.

And the finish is good too. The surfaces have good tactility and the controls a well-balanced measure of resistance. The seats are decently adjustable and comfortable even if they do seem to be upholstered in something that looks and feels like a cross between a kagool and an arctic survival tent.

So, a cut above the average inside and decent looking all round, if a bit cliché-Volvo in its style.

But what’s the S40 DRIVe like to drive?

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