1.5 T3 163hp Inscription Auto FWD 5dr

Lovely small family car

We are a small family of 3 (one of whom has mobility issues) so it's a good size for us, although the rear access isn't massive and the boot is smaller than our old V70. The XC40 is a nice design and well equipped as an Inscription with a Lounge Pack but can very easily drift up to £40k+ which would leave me personally feeling short-changed. Volvo Assistance are exceptional but the dealers themselves (much like any those of any "premium" manufacturers) are very variable for sales/aftersales/parts. It is a very comfortable car with a surprisingly helpful 360-degree parking camera & front/rear sensors which you initially feel make you lazy but quickly make you wonder what you ever did without them. The 3-cylinder engine is interesting in that it can be almost silent and at other times verging on rough, hard acceleration is effective but noisy. I'd imagine it suits the auto g/box better than the manual but with 8 gears it does sometimes feel like it can't decide which gear to be in; putting your foot down hard can cause juddering. The centre console squeaks prodigiously after 4k miles and the dealer has already had one failed go at fixing it. Fuel economy is good @ 37mpg (the V70 got 24 if I was lucky) but a Mini Cooper Countryman would undoubtedly be better, not sure it'd be fair to expect higher figures for a 160bhp petrol turbo auto in a car of this size. The auto handbrake is a very flawed design because it brakes the car when reverse parking (requires touching the accelerator to release which is a bit jerky in an auto designed to "creep"): if you don't switch it on then the car rolls backwards in traffic waiting for the stop/start to engage. Overall it is lovely and nicer to use than most of its competitors (Audis and BMWs with equivalent spec. are much more expensive).

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