Volvo XC40 T3 car review: A classy little machine

The Volvo XC40 is a wonderful car, except for two things. The good news is that both are fixable. The bad news is that only Volvo can sort them out, not you, your car dealer or any other third party.

First, there’s the automatic electric parking brake. This is a feature that has been trickling down the manufacturers’ ranges for some time since it first appeared on exec saloons. On the whole it is an excellent idea. When, for example, you’re in stop-start slow traffic on a slope, when you stop the car will automatically apply the parking brake. When you move off the parking brake disapplies itself. Usually this is fairly seamless, but on this particular Volvo the brake puts up a bit of resistance, and so it isn’t all that smooth. It always does it, too, whatever angle you find yourself at. So that’s annoying and, as the old saying goes, I suspect they all do that. It’s (presumably) an engineering flaw that is fairly straightforward to put right, but meantime it makes living with the otherwise highly companionable XC40 a bit less satisfying. You don’t get used to it.

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Second, is the price. At the end of the day this is a small SUV, but with no four-wheel drive and acceptable but not outstanding levels of equipment. Volvo insists on calling itself a “premium brand” these days, which may or may not be justified – I think the market isn’t ready to plonk it in the same category as BMW – but it is not enough to justify a slightly steep list price (also reflected in monthly PCP costs). The cheapest XC40 runs to about £30,000, which is high, even for the current Car of the Year winner.

So, this latest variation on the XC40, the T3, has an awful lot going for it. Not least is the very responsive new three-cylinder engine. These are all the rage now, smaller capacity units turbocharged and supercharged to get maximum performance from them, but with the underlying economic fuel consumption from a small-capacity power unit. In the T3 (turbocharged three cylinder), Volvo have priced a really fine 1.5-litre petrol power plant, which feels like it is propelling the XC40 with almost alarming alacrity, though the on-paper figures are actually rather more pedestrian. Small cars always feel faster than they really are, you see. If you really want to – and I really cannot see why you’d have any sane legal or illegal reason to – you can push your XC40 all the way to 124mph. Too fast, if anything.

The only slight disappointment I found with the set-up in the manual transmission is a slight lack of smoothness in the shift from first to second gears, but then the press car was fairly new and that might well sort itself out over the miles.

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Inside, the Volvo is the usual ensemble of good taste and smart design. I liked the vertical air vents with their vaguely aeronautical styling (reminiscent of old Saabs, the Swedish rival to Volvo that went bust a few years ago). The seats are, in fine Scandinavian tradition, heated and very comfortable, and high levels of passenger safety are built in to the design, such as the extra springs in the seat that cushion the impact of a sudden descent (ie if you try to get your little Volvo to fly). The iPad-style touchscreen is mostly intuitive to use, and the comprehensive parking aids, including a 360-degree camera, are very welcome.

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For the rest, the T3 is the usual XC40 package – distinctively designed with the high kick-up styling line along the rear doors, the classic grille treatment and the trademark rear lights and “shoulder line” running the length of the car. Of course the world doesn’t need yet another baby SUV or crossover, and the XC40 is hardly more practical than any conventional hatch (presumably including new V40 when it arrives). The XC40 makes a decent case for itself as an attractive package. They just need to do something about that automatic brake and the pricing. That’s not too much to ask.