Laid-back lap of luxury

Accent's on refinement in Volvo's convertible

Oct 21, 2007

Special to the Star

Four-seat convertibles straddle the line between indulgence – the wind in your hair, the sun on your scalp – and practicality – room enough for your family and stuff.

Many try to be sporty; many try to be luxurious. The result is often a nice car, but a compromised car, one that doesn't quite deliver the driving pleasure of a roadster, but which also isn't as comfortable as a more conventional auto.

Volvo, of course, has always been good at striking a balance. They're among the most stylish cars you can buy these days while also being among the safest. The C70 is an example of just how good they are at it: a coupe-cabriolet with a folding hardtop which negates much of the drawbacks in terms of wind and road noise of typical four-seaters while retaining all the style and panache with the roof folded.

Certainly, my Zanzibar Gold C70 was a real looker. Whether the top was up or down, its low, wide stance, chiselled shoulders, long rear deck and great detailing (turn-signal repeaters in the mirrors; gorgeous 18-inch wheels) drew all kinds of stares.

Top down, it looks as good as anything else in its price class. Top up, because of the roof's three-piece construction and a gently curving roofline, it's the best-looking of all the hardtop convertibles on the market, equally at home as a coupe cruising around at night as it is a convertible meandering along the boulevard on a sunny day.

A relaxed pace seems to suit the C70 best. While its five-cylinder engine is fortified by a strong turbocharger, the weight of the top mechanism and all the safety gear – pop-up roll bars behind the rear seats, side-curtain airbags that deploy from the top of the door sills – means that the Volvo convertible can feel a little lethargic in around-town driving, at least until the turbo spools up a bit.

The news is better on the open road, where you're almost always in the engine's fat torque band and rarely need to row the six gears (an automatic is also available) to summon up sufficient passing power. The engine, which produces 218 hp and 236 lb.-ft. of torque, is flexible and extremely smooth.

The presence of 18-inch Pirelli P Zero tires was an encouraging sign for the C70's cornering capability, and, indeed, it hangs on gamely around fast bends.

But it only takes a couple of corners to discover that this really isn't a sports car. It's impressively capable and will never bite you back, but there's little entertainment to be had by driving it hard. The steering feels a little loose around the straight-ahead, the brakes have a soft, long-travel pedal and there's a fair amount of body roll.

Best to dial back the pace and enjoy the more positive aspects of the C70's repertoire: refinement, ride quality and a real sense of solidity, despite the huge hole in the structure the roof has created.

So the sport package fitted to my tester, really, had little to do with sport; it's more about improved equipment.

You not only get bi-xenon headlights, headlamp washers and those gorgeous wheels, but the interior is bumped up a notch as well, with leather seating surfaces (with heat in front), auto-dimming mirrors, rain-sensing wipers and other convenience features.

Individually, the pieces are nice: the multi-function steering wheel is a thick three-spoke affair with metallic inserts, the shifter has a fillet of aluminum draped down its centre and the handbrake gains a leather boot. All of the major controls are housed in a metallic waterfall that cascades down from the top of the dash and even the door handles have a nice, chunky heft to them.

Still, the overall impression that the interior gives doesn't quite live up to the C70's $56,000 base price. While many pieces have been upgraded, the overall design and architecture of the C70 is based on the much less-expensive C30, S40 and V50 models, cars that start around the $30,000 mark.

At that price, the plain door panel caps (they're a huge expanse of putty-coloured plastic) and the hard plastic on the bottom of the dash is more forgivable; at more than $63,000 as tested, those pieces are a little harder to stomach in the C70.

No complaints, though, about overall comfort. There's plenty of room in the front seats to stretch out (roof up, headroom is decent, too) and the two rear buckets are comfortable for shorter adults and perfect for growing children.

The top is one of this car's prime attractions, of course. Push a button on the console while holding your foot on the brake pedal – this is a Volvo, of course, so safety first – and it performs an incredible mechanical ballet, splitting into three main pieces and folding into the trunk in about 30 seconds.

Because of its three-piece design, the roof does preserve quite a bit more space in the trunk than you might expect; more than the 3 Series BMW, which also has a three-part roof and almost as much as soft-tops like the Saab 9-3 and Audi A4.

What you don't get, however, is easy access to your stuff. Even with a convenient little switch that motors the roof out of the way when it's folded, your bags still have to fit underneath a stiff plastic cover, accessible through a pretty narrow opening. Loading larger pieces, or even a stuffed briefcase, requires you to have the roof up first. During the winter months, when you'll pretty much leave the roof up all the time, you can swing away the divider and the trunk becomes positively huge.

With the top up, this is one of the most refined, livable coupes in its price range. Wind and road noise are but a dull murmur – meaning you can better enjoy the killer 910-watt Dynaudio sound system – and outward visibility is excellent, an important safety feature enabled by the hardtop's thin pillars.

Cruising along on a cool autumn night, the climate control and seat heaters keeping you warm and toasty, the C70 suffuses you with a feeling of calm and serenity.

It may not be the most electrifying drive and it may be quite expensive for a car based on a similar platform to the Mazda3 and European Ford Focus, but the C70's balance of attributes makes it a very appealing package nonetheless.

Toronto Star