A (big) Small Car

Volvo’s XC40 is its smallest SUV, but it certainly doesn’t act like it.

- Tushar Burman

I WASN’T TOO KEEN ON - or hopeful of - a good drive in the Volvo XC40. A spin around the outer ring road in Hyderabad, as scheduled, sounded short and unimaginative. The fact that I didn’t have to share a car was small consolation. As I’m ‘driving’ down the highway, with little to no traffic to worry about, I imagine that any co-passenger would be as freaked out as I am. You see, my hands on the steering wheel are as effective as the quotes around ‘driving’. They’re there, they’re emphasising the action, but that’s about all. The XC40 is steering, accelerating and braking for itself, and I continue to have a pulse, albeit somewhat more rapid. Judgement Day is here, and Cyberdyne systems wasn’t involved.

Volvo India isn’t messing about with the new XC40. The smallest SUV they sell finally completes the lineup, which includes the mid-size XC60 and the large XC90. Each one is a technology keynote in its own right, but to have this much packed into a millennial vehicle is a bit new for our market (Volvo expects its millennials to be a bit more well-heeled, obviously). The XC40 we drove bears the “D4 R-design AWD” badge, and for the most part, is fully-loaded. You get LED-everything, a panoramic sunroof for bad parenting, powered tailgate, big wheels and to top it all, it’s autonomous AF. Volvos usually come in at very competitive prices for luxury vehicles. “CBU (completely built up) cars at CKD (completely knocked down) prices” is how they put it - which means even their fully-imported vehicles are sold at the prices of locally-assembled models. By that ken, we’d expect the XC40 to come in around the Rs 40 lakh mark, which is very competitive indeed.