The old XC90 was a little different and in some ways even worse because this was a car you bought because it was a safe and practical space for your children. Which meant that it was always bought with just a hint of resentment. You weren’t old enough for a Volvo. You still had fire in your loins. You could still ski and scuba dive and, at parties, women still found you attractive. You wanted a BMW M3.
But you had to have a Volvo because you needed seven seats for your kids. And it was the most practical seven-seater of them all. And it had to be a diesel, really.
The new XC90, however, is different. Yes, it’s still a Volvo and, yes, it’s still the most practical and sensible seven-seater of them all. But, oh my God, it’s a nice place to sit. It feels like you’re lounging around in one of those Scandinavian furniture shops where everything is beautiful and pale and a chair costs £2,500.
There’s a diamond-cut starter button and a crystal-glass gear lever and detailing on the dials that makes the detailing on an IWC watch look like something you’d find on a proud parent’s fridge door. The central command screen is like an iPad and the roof is glass and it’s protected by a cool and crisp electric sunshade made from what looks like white calico.
Every other car in the world feels like the inside of a German’s washbag. They’re all a symphony of dark greys with red detailing. The Volvo is not like that at all. It’s better. This side of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, it’s the nicest interior you’ll find anywhere.
And unlike a Danish chair, it’s not that expensive. Prices for the entry-level all-wheel-drive diesel start at less than £47,000. And so that’s that then. Or is it?
Because the car I am writing about today is a new version of the XC90. It has the same enormous body and the same spacious and wonderful interior. But this one, says Volvo, can do 134.5 miles to the gallon.
That’s not a misprint. It is actually claiming that this car, which is almost 5 yards long and weighs 2.5 tons, can travel from London to Nottingham on less than 8 pints of petrol. And that’s not a misprint either. Petrol. Not diesel.
Oh, and just in case you are thinking that it must be fitted with the sort of engine that you’d normally expect to find in a tin opener, consider this: it’ll do 0 to 62mph in 5.6 seconds. It’s as fast off the line, therefore, as a Ferrari 348.
So what we have here is a large and sensible seven-seater estate car, with an excellent Scandi interior, that can keep up with a Ferrari but do 134.5mpg. Drooling yet?
Well, obviously, there are a few things I need to point out before you rush off to the Volvo dealer. First of all, it can only do 134.5mpg in theory. You’ll never manage that figure in real life. And certainly not if you go from 0 to 62mph in 5.6 seconds. Oh, and the car I tested, which had a few extras fitted, costs more than £75,000.
The design is called the T8 Twin Engine, and I like that. Most car companies use the term ‘hybrid’, which is another word for ‘mongrel’, but Volvo has been honest and told us what’s what. The car has two engines.
There’s a 316bhp turbocharged and supercharged 2-litre 4-cylinder petrol engine at the front that drives the front wheels. And then at the back, driving the rear wheels, there’s an 86bhp electric motor. In between, where you’d expect to find a prop shaft, is where the batteries live.
This car can be charged from the mains, or by the petrol engine as you drive along. Either way, it is not going to be a vehicle you can service at home. Even if you have the Haynes manual.
There’s a button on the centre console that allows you to choose whether you’d like to use power made at a power station by burning Russian gas, or power made by crushed prawns to produce oil. Most of the time I used both.
Volvo says you can travel about 27 miles on electric power, but I didn’t get that far. I engaged silent drive while in the multistorey car park at Selfridges and I’d only gone down one level before a woman ran out of the shop and right in front of me. She simply hadn’t heard me coming. I decided after that to use the petrol engine as well. Because that’s the thing about petrol, it’s not only brilliant and ecological but safe too.
Other things? Well, sitting on the optional air suspension the ride was smooth, the stereo was beyond brilliant, the seats were comfortable, the handling was better than I expected and, while I didn’t understand all the read-outs on the dash, I did enjoy looking at the graphics.
Drawbacks? A couple. The petrol engine is not what you’d call refined. It sounds like a diesel and this is a sound that has no place in a £75,000 car. And the gear lever has to be nudged twice before it engages a gear.
And the size, I’ll be honest, can be a nuisance. It’d be fine in Houston, which is what Sven and Thor were thinking about when they said to one another: ‘Let’s make it enormous.’ But it can be a bloody nuisance in Britain.
You’d have this issue with a Range Rover, too, of course. And that brings me back to the original question. Which is best? Well, for refinement and imperiousness, the Range Rover, of course. But in every other way, it has to be the Volvo. Especially the way it will always be where you left it. Because who in their right mind would ever want to steal it?
17 April 2016
It’s devilishly good at rattling Mr Normal
Ferrari 488 GTB
We British like to think of ourselves as being well mannered and cultured, with a great sense of humour and a steely resolve that manifests itself in the shape of a stiff upper lip. But when you drive a Ferrari through this green and pleasant land, you realize quite quickly that, actually, we are mealy-mouthed, bitter and racked with envy and hate.
If I drive a normal car to work, I pull up to the junction at the end of my street and people let me into the slow-moving crawl on the main road. But when I’m in a Ferrari, they don’t. And it’s the same story on a motorway. People pull over to let a normal car overtake. But when I’m in a Ferrari, they just sit in the outside lane for ever.
In Britain, Mr Normal sees a Ferrari as a reminder that his life hasn’t worked out quite as well as he had hoped. And he sees its driver as a living embodiment of the good-looking kid at school who got the girls, and the sixth-former who nicked his packed lunch on a field trip.
He believes that if he can inconvenience a Ferrari driver, just for a moment, it’s one in the eye for the rich and the privileged. It’s ‘score one’ for the little man.
Then you have the cyclists. Many, as we know, use their bicycles to wage a class war. They see all car drivers as an unholy cross between Margaret Thatcher and Hitler, so they spit and they yell and they put footage of you on their bicycling websites when they get home.
If, however, you are in a Ferrari, they go berserk because now you are an ambassador for the devil himself. You used child labour to make your money. You were responsible for Bhopal. You may even be a Tory. So it is their duty as a comrade to bang on your roof and scream obscenities.
Even the moderately well off can’t cope with a Ferrari. It upsets their inner zebra. Last week, in one of those towns outside London that’s exactly the same as all the others, I encountered the owner of a hunkered-down, souped-up BMW M3. This was his patch. He was the alpha male in this manor. He probably owned a wine bar. And he really didn’t take kindly to someone turning up with what was very obviously a bigger member. So he came alongside and he roared his exhausts and he danced and skittered to make me go away. Which I did.
You simply do not get any of these responses in other countries. A Ferrari in America is a spur, a reminder that you need to get up earlier in the morning and try harder. In Italy, it’s a thing of beauty to be admired. Elsewhere, it’s a dream made real. But in Britain, it causes everyone to say: ‘It’s all right for some.’ Which is the most depressing phrase in the English language.
And it means that for every minute of enjoyment you get from your Ferrari, you have to endure ten minutes of abuse and hate. This means you need a thick skin to drive one. Unless you encounter me on your travels. Because when I see someone driving a Ferrari these days,
I want to run over and embrace them and offer to have their babies.
The problem is capital-gains tax. Because there isn’t any on most cars, they have become a zero-rated currency. You buy something rare, then you put it in a garage, in cotton wool, and then you sell it and trouser 100 per cent of the increase in value. George Osborne gets not one penny.
This means it’s your nest egg. It’s your pension. It’s an ISA with windscreen wipers. And so, obviously, you’re not going to drive it anywhere. The risk is too great.
That saddens me because all of the world’s wonderful cars are now locked away in dehumidified cellars, which means they aren’t on the road, where they belong. If I were chancellor of the exchequer, I’d introduce capital-gains tax on cars tomorrow. And I’d make it retrospective. It would be a vote winner among the mealy-mouthed and the bitter. And because rare cars are now changing hands for millions, it would net enough to pay for a kiddie’s iron lung or something. And, best of all, it would get all of these wonderful cars back into public view where we can enjoy looking at them.
Certainly, if I owned the Ferrari I was driving last week, I’d use it to go everywhere. I would take it on unnecessary journeys. I would volunteer to run errands for friends. And I would be happy when one of the children rang at three in the morning to say they had no money and couldn’t get home. Because I could go and pick them up.
There are those who say that a 488 is not a proper Ferrari because it’s turbocharged. And that turbocharging has no place on such a thoroughbred. They argue that it’s turbocharged only so that it can meet EU emission regulations and that sticking to the letter of the law flies in the face of the Ferrari ethos. A Ferrari is about freedom and adrenaline and speed and passion and beauty and soul. It’s not about carbon dioxide and bureaucracy.
Yes. I get that. But let’s not forget that Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari race car was turbocharged or that the best Ferrari of them all – the F40 – used forced induction. And also let’s not forget that, thanks to modern engine-management systems, you simply don’t know that witchcraft is being used to pump fuel and air into the V8. It doesn’t even sound turbocharged. It sounds like a Ferrari. It sounds baleful. It sounds wonderful.
And, oh my God, it’s lovely to drive. You can potter about with the gearbox in automatic and it’s not uncomfortable or difficult in any way. That is probably Ferrari’s greatest achievement with the 488. To take something so highly tuned and highly strung and powerful and make it feel like a pussy cat.
It’s so docile that you get the impression it can’t possibly work when you put your foot down. But it just does. I know of no mid-engined car that feels so friendly. So on your side. There’s no understeer at all and there’s no suddenness from the back end either. The old 458 was not as good as a McLaren 12C. But this new car puts the prancing horse back on top. As a driving machine, it’s – there’s no other word – perfect.
I still hate the dashboard, though. Putting all the controls for the lights and indicators and wipers on the steering wheel is silly. And so is the satnav and radio, which can be operated only by the driver.
I suppose you’d get used to it if you used the car a lot. And that’s the best thing about the 488. Because you can. James May recently bought the old 458 Speciale, which, because the car market is mad, has rocketed in value to such an extent that he hardly ever uses it.
The 488, because it’s not a limited-edition special, will not make you any money. So you can, and you may as well, use it as a car.
Yes, it’ll cause everyone else on the road to become Arthur Scargill. But look at it this way. When you’re filling it with fuel and you’re being sneered at by the man at the next pump, give him a real reason to dislike you. Saunter over and point out that, if you didn’t have a Ferrari, it would make no difference to his life.
He’d still be on his way to a useless garden centre, in his crummy Citroën with his ugly wife and his two gormless children.
24 April 2016
The superbarge gets a rocket up its rear
Mercedes-AMG C 63
Right. Let’s be clear on one thing straight away. If you have a BMW 3-series, or a Mercedes C-class, or an Audi A4, then you are driving the wrong car. Because what you should have is a Jaguar XE.
It may appear to be an ordinary four-door saloon, but actually, if you stand back for a moment and look at it properly, you will notice that it is extremely handsome. The body appears to have been stretched over the wheels, which gives the impression that it’s ripped, that it’s barely containing its internal organs.
And that’s just the start of it. I was bombing about last week in the V6 version, and, oh my word, what an engine. It doesn’t move the needle very much when it comes to power or torque. It delivers what you were expecting. No more. No less. But the noise it makes when you accelerate is sublime. Not since the Alfa Romeo GTV6 have I heard such a muted, mellifluous sound. And it seems to be coming from the engine itself, not electronic trickery in the exhaust system.
There’s more. Even though it is fitted with 35 per cent profile tyres that sit on the wheels like a coat of paint and have about as much give as elm, the car is not busy or crashy in any way. Life gets a bit hectic if you put it in Dynamic mode, so I didn’t bother. I left it in Normal and settled back into a perfectly crafted seat to let it waft along in the way a Jaguar should. And the diesel version I tried a few months ago – which has taller tyres – was even better.
If I had to find a criticism, I’d say the dashboard is a bit dreary. All the buttons are small and hutched up in a corner, leaving vast swathes of plastic. I’ve seen more interesting-looking tabletops. And the graphics on the dials are a bit Lada circa 1974. But that’s not a good-enough reason to not buy this car. Not by a long way.
The only reason you might buy something else is that you don’t want an engine under the bonnet. You want a howling, fire-breathing monster. Jaguar will offer such a thing in the future, but for now it doesn’t. That means if you want a superheated, medium-sized saloon car today, it comes down to a choice between the BMW M3 and the Mercedes-AMG C 63.
This is not a good-looking car. The back looks as if it’s melted, and there are way too many flashy styling details. It seems as though it’s crashed into an Abu Dhabi interior design shop and everything has just sort of stuck.
Inside, the news is better. It feels special. And beautifully put-together and interesting. When I had the Jag, I accidentally removed the satnav data card, and when I put it back I was told via a message on the screen that I had to turn the car off and then on again so the system could reboot. You just know that this wouldn’t happen in a Mercedes. And that if it did, the man responsible would be sent into the desert with a shovel and a service revolver.
Then of course there’s the engine. Gone are the days when AMG Mercs had massive, charismatic 6.2-litre V8s. Because of emission regulations, you must now make do with four litres. Sure, a brace of turbochargers means you get even more power than before, but the bellow has gone. And the crackle. Now it’s just loud.
Not as loud as the tyres, though. God, they make a racket. I went to Bray in Berkshire for lunch, and when I arrived, all I wanted to eat was a handful of Nurofen.
I was also extremely uncomfortable. One of the things I used to like about AMG cars was that no real concession had been made to handling or Nürburgring lap times or any of that stuff. They were fast in a straight line and sideways in the corners. This made them fun and comfy.
But obviously someone at Mercedes has decided that AMG cars must corner flat and fast, which means the suspension has been beefed up, which means they can go round the corners more quickly, which means they have become frightening and bumpy.
Very bumpy. I know my car was running on the optional 19in wheels, which will have made things worse, but the ride really was far too stiff.
On the upside of all this, the car doesn’t half shift. The mid-range acceleration is mesmerizing, and it really does cling on in the bends.
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br /> You’d imagine, then, that because the company has gone all serious and decided to change the character of the AMG from a sort of European muscle car – a Ford Mustang in lederhosen – to a finely balanced and fast road racer, it would have fitted a twin-clutch flappy-paddle gearbox. Weirdly, though, it hasn’t. You still get a slushmatic that, even more weirdly, is operated via a Cadillac-style column-mounted stalk.
Regular readers of this column will know that I’ve been a fan of AMG Mercs for many years. I’ve even owned three. But the love affair is waning slightly. They’re becoming too chintzy. And unsure of what they’re supposed to be, which is smile-a-minute battleships. Not fast and agile motor torpedo boats.
Because if it’s a fast and agile motor torpedo boat you want, you’re way better off with the BMW M3. As a driver’s tool, it knocks the Mercedes into a cocked hat. And it looks better. And it’s easier to live with. But, that said, it too is far from perfect. The steering is weird and it feels heavy. If I were to write a school report on this car, I’d say: ‘BMW can do better.’
Frankly, if I were in the market for a fast, medium-sized saloon, I’d wait six months and buy the new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, which has 503bhp and rear-wheel drive and is an Alfa. But you probably don’t want to wait that long for a car that you sort of know won’t quite live up to its on-paper promise. ’Twas ever thus with Alfa.
Which brings us right back to the beginning. Because that Jaguar V6 is not exactly a slouch. It does 155mph, accelerates to 62mph before you’ve had a chance to look at the speedometer and corners beautifully. And it’s cheaper to buy than its German rivals, costs less to run and is better-looking.
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