Features

Is this car miles behind, or is it leading a curve that's about to yo-yo back into fashion? Or, as I suspect, is it just pretending not to care?

It must be 20 years now, back to the days of the Mk2 Golf and 205GTI, that every sporty hatch had a black body kit, a perimeter of contrasting plastic cladding the wheel-arches and sills and bumpers. Then, all of a sudden, in the way that fashions do change when they can be cheaply switched at facelift time, it all went body colour. Now black is just for base-model 4x4s and delivery vans. And Volvo C30s.

It's a car that tries quite hard to do its own thing. As the world latches on to 'premium' hatches, this isn't just a regularly shaped contender. Unlike a 1-Series or Audi A3, it's clear there'll never be a five-door version. The Alfa GT is the nearest thing, I guess.

The C30 is strictly a four-seater, with no space to wedge a protesting bod between the two individual back seats and no belt for them if you did.

But if the C30 isn't a regulation hatch, it isn't your stereotypical fastback coupe shape either. Instead of tapering in a vertical plane, it tapers in the horizontal, the roof and glass narrowing so much that the back end has a definite head-and-shoulders outline.

It's a good look, partly, I suspect, because we like to anthropomorphise our cars, don't we? And on the sly it also makes for handy space within.

Volvo's design language has turned out surprisingly versatile. It morphed from saloons and estates onto an SUV, then a coupe-cabrio and now this, and all of them look original in their categories and comfortable in their skins, happy to be Volvos.

The bones of the C30 are from the S40/V50/C70, but only the bonnet is a shared panel. The nose has a more aggressive expression, the headlamps are swept further back. The tail end is all unique, of course.

The inverted-U rear-lights give it away at night. By day, you see the narrowness of the glasshouse, the tall brake lights and glass tailgate between. I recall from my Aygo how nice it was to have a small glass-only tailgate to flip up and down, rather than a huge and heavy door. Until that is you've got a big square box to stuff in, which is when you find it's actually you that's stuffed.

Inside, the dash, shared with the C30's mechanical relatives, is a highlight. It's modern, well made and a cinch to use, but most of all stark and elegantly simple. The seats are fantastically comfy, even if they're covered in a curiously greasy-feeling fabric. It's rammed out with safety kit, including (though as a £350 option only) Volvo's new magic-eye mirrors, which shine a warning light when someone's in your blind spot.

Select for your C30 from a bewildering range of eight engines. It starts with four-cylinder petrols in 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0, then fives of 2.4 and 2.5 turbo. Diesels are 1.6 and 2.0 fours, and a nice 180bhp 2.4-litre five-cylinder.

Volvo doesn't pretend there's any particular rocket science to its prices. They simply take a power and spec match to an equivalent Audi A3, and undercut them by 'a bit'.