The latest version of the Volvo C70 coupé comes with a retractable steel roof. What larks! At the touch of a button, the boot lid launches itself skywards and the roof rears up, splits into three segments and peels off towards the back of the car. At which point anyone familiar with that recent Citroën television advertising campaign may experience a momentary spike of panic, fearing that the car is about to transform into a robot — with you still wrapped in it.
Reassuringly, the Volvo C70 settles for merely turning into another car — a rather beautiful, clean-lined cruiser. Not as impressive a mutation as Citroën’s breakdancing automaton, perhaps, but still pretty magical, and probably more useful in the long run. The roof-removal process takes 30 seconds from start to finish, which is a lot quicker than doing it yourself with an oxyacetylene torch and a Philips screwdriver. True, there is quite a lot of clumping and thumping involved, but, hey, you try putting a big metal roof in a small cupboard without anybody knowing you are doing it.
There have been convertible Volvos before, but never one with an electronic metal roof, and the breakthrough inspires Volvo to come over all FotheringtonÂÂThomas in the promotional literature. ”Say hello to the clouds and listen to the crickets; smell the grass along the roadside. Take comfort in the leather seats and fill your lungs with nature’s scent. Savour the moment while it lasts, you’re singing a verse in the song of life.” Not all of which is possible, obviously, on a congested city street. Still, no matter where you drive it, the C70 puts you just one keystroke away from access to the fundamental human pleasure of fizzing about with your head in the air.
It’s also quick, smooth and magisterially quiet. Let’s repeat at this juncture that the C70 is made by Volvo. The point needs underscoring because the association of Volvos with fun and responsiveness is not automatically made. People invest in a Volvo much in the same way that they take out a life-assurance policy: because it seems to make a certain, robust kind of practical sense.
In any case, legendarily, Volvos are themselves believed to be a species of life assurance. The company’s single most valuable selling point is its reputation for safety. It is the acknowledged master of the airbag and the crumple zone. Its products attest to many accumulated years of Swedish caution. Its crash-test dummies are, surely, the best in the business. And, it goes without saying, the safest. If I were a crash-test dummy, I’d want to work for Volvo.
Which only makes the very notion of a convertible Volvo all the more contradictory. Volvo is, surely, the spiritual home of the family-hugging cocoon and the bomb-proof child-lugger — not of the devil-may-care danger wagon. Never forget that in a Volvo, the default setting for the headlamps is on all the time. So, a Volvo convertible … well, in some respects, you would no more expect Ferrari to put their weight behind a people carrier, or Lamborghini to start developing forklift trucks.
Inevitably, though, Volvo stresses that the C70 is a convertible that majors in reinforcement. It’s the convertible that it’s OK to crash. Obviously, not even Volvo can guarantee occupants’ immunity from the effect of objects dropping out of the clear blue sky. Nevertheless, the car does contain the world’s first ”door-mounted inflatable curtain”, which, in the event that the C70 is attacked from the side, explodes upwards, providing duvet-style relief from the worst of the impact.
Furthermore, Volvo would like you to know that if you roll the C70, those side pillars, in all their hydro-formed, high-strength glory, are so permanent that archaeologists will be digging them up and marvelling at their intactness for centuries to come.
It may not be as slick as a Mercedes coupé. And it may not be as light to the touch as a BMW coupé. But it has got an electronic roof, and it’s probably safer than the house you live in. And, on top of that, it is, surely, the first truly good-looking Volvo for at least four decades. That’s more than enough breakthroughs for one car. — Â