Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £13,750 to £23,495
Attractive and innovative cabin, crisp, enjoyable steering and handling, smooth five-cylinder engines, sophisticated safety features.
Occasional transmission snatch, and that's about it.
Volvo's current style is sporty and sculptural. Now it's blended with a great interior, the expected safety virtues and the best handling a Volvo has ever had to make a very appealing package.
The S40 performed extremely well in the EuroNCAP crash tests receiving a full five star front and side impact rating. Child protection is also high at 4 out of 5, and pedestrian safety is rated at 2 out of 4. The S40 has it all: front, side and curtain airbags, load limiters on the outer rear seatbelts as well as the front ones, a whiplash protection system, belt-undone reminders for all seats, 2.8in of clearance above the engine to help the bonnet absorb pedestrian impact... and so on.
Volvo used not to allow users to switch off the front passenger airbag, claiming that they might forget to turn it on again, but now such a switch is available as an option so it's possible to carry a rear-facing baby seat in the front seat.
Traction and stability controls are standard, but the UK won't get the all-wheel drive version of the T5. Unusually, laminated side windows are available as an option. Security provisions are suitably comprehensive, too, with deadlocks, marked parts, an alarm and immobiliser all standard. The innovative centre console also makes the stereo impossible to steal, should criminal elements get in.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Volvo S40
wrote on 21 09 2006
wrote on 12 09 2006
wrote on 07 06 2006