Volvo C30 Concept

I'm going to talk today about the Volvo C30 Concept, which is going to be officially presented soon in Paris. But first, some background.

Swedish cars have always fascinated me. Apart from the ruggedness and the resilience to cold weather, their cars are universally odd-looking in exactly the same way that Swedish furniture is universally odd-looking. This isn't always a good thing—take, for instance, the bizarre proportions and lines on the Saab 90 or the ridiculously brick-like Volvo 740. These are cars which haven't aged very well.

At the same time, however, the Swedes have managed to pull off some real show-stoppers. Cars like the Saab 92b have the same bizarre Scandanavian heritage as their aforementioned homelier counterparts, but are exceedingly handsome at the same time. The Volvo 240 is, in my opinion, one of the most significant station wagon designs ever assembled. Even the Saab 900—which the same goofy cues as the 90—is a strikingly coherent design as a drop-top.

The Swedish cars that I've always been most impressed, though, are the two-door Volvos: both coupés and hatchbacks. While the rest of the scandanavian lineup is occasionally big-hit with a lot of big-misses, the two-door Volvo line is a consistent performer.

Let's take a look at some history. A car that I've liked for a long, long time is the Volvo P1800. Let's take a look.

The P1800 is an absolutely exquisite vehicle. Here's another look at the back end.

The P1800 is one of the very few cars which, although it's available as a station wagon (the P1800ES, technically a shooting brake), is actually more attractive as a coupé. Well, perhaps not—looking at that P1800ES picture reminds me just how much of a station wagon nut I really am.

Nevertheless, the P1800 is dead sexy.

The Volvo 240 coupé is similarly handsome.

It's difficult to find high-resolution pictures of moderate-to-high-quality Volvo 240s on the web. Odd, that.

After the 240, Volvo released the characteristically 1980s 780, which we'll conveniently skip here because it's a fairly unremarkable design.

In the late 1990s, however, the C70 was launched right around the same time as The Saint (the film) was released. Much like the original Saint TV show, wherein Roger Moore drove a Volvo P1800, Val Kilmer drove a Volvo C70 in the newer movie.

The movie was sortof a dud. And in all reality, the car was too. Volvo didn't sell many copies of the C70 and they're quite rare. Most of this was due to its market positioning, which filled a niche which simply didn't exist. Near-luxury offbeat coupés and convertibles simply don't sell in the $40k range. Mercedes was the only real manufacturer with any serious claim to this market, if it could even be called that. 1997 was just at the beginning of the SUV boom, remember, and people with bucks weren't blowing them on Volvos.

Nevertheless, I do like the C70 strictly in terms of style.

What's most suprising about this is that everything from the A-pillars on back is copied almost verbatim in the Holden Monaro (known in the US as the new Pontiac GTO), which was released a solid two years after the C70. Really, look at the photograph—the similarity is flat-out striking. In fact, it's so striking that I'm going to paste it here anyway.

Now, it's important to note that although all these cars seem to have some sporting design elements, they really have no real performance heritage whatsoever. As far as I can tell, the P1800 performed only slightly better than the Karmann Ghia—which is to say, not very well at all. The 240 was only ever available with an inline-4 engine (although some came turbocharged) and the 780 broke the Volvo model naming scheme (digit for the series, digit for the number of cylinders, 0 or a digit for the number of doors) by having a V6 instead of the expected 8-cylinder mill—again, not terribly sporty. The C70 fared out with the venerable Volvo T5 engine—which is a very reliable piece of engineering, but which won't really go screaming to 60.

But...that's not what I'm talking about here. Now that I've gone through the whole mess of describing these old Volvos, I'm going to get around to what I started this post about so many words ago: the Volvo C30 Concept.

The Volvo C30 Concept is supposedly originally going to be unveiled sometime in early January in Los Angeles and at the upcoming Detroit and Paris auto shows. Volvo apparantely leaked (intentionally or not) the images of the vehicle on their Spanish-language news website a few days ago. I originally noticed this at Jalopnik, who reported it from a chain of sources.

So without further ado, here's the C30 Concept.

And here are some assorted lower-res shots.

Jalopnik's take is pretty much exactly what I'd say about it: the C30 is a two-door SCC (complete with P1800ES tail) sans the nuttiness and with an S40 interior. It's very likely that the C30 is based on Ford's C1 platform, which is currently used by the European Focus, the Mazda3, and the S40 (hence the copycat interior).

Overall, they've really done this car correctly. It's got the classic Volvo arches done correctly all the way through the rear lamps, and actually manages to keep the front-end proportions dead-on in the process. The P1800ES tail is a fantastic touch, even though everyone will be able to see your celery sticking out the top of your grocery bags. Assuredly, the C30 is going to understeer like crazy since it's a Volvo (and is guaranteed to be front-drive) and the steering will be ridiculously remote. Sure, it's based on the C1, but the S40 doesn't handle like a Focus now either, does it?

The C30 is a neat little hatch which, although I probably wouldn't actually purchase, am nevertheless impressed by. The Volvo guys have nailed the two-door design once again.