2006 Volvo C70 (continued)
Walkaround
The designer of the new C70, American John Kinsey, spent four years on the project. Although Mercedes, Lexus and Cadillac use retractable steel tops for their two-seat sports cars, those designs were ignored because, says Kinsey, "The tops on those cars are so small that none of their mechanical aspects even apply to the challenges we had in designing ours."
Everything revolves around the roof, developed in Italy by Pininfarina, under Kinsey. It had to clearly be a coupe roofline, and it is the most handsome of coupes, with a solid upward sweeping A-pillar and delicately thin and downward sweeping C-pillar. Stand close enough, and you can spot the two seams that enable the roof to stack into thirds and drop into the trunk, but otherwise there's not a hint of compromise in the graceful roofline.
The roof lands on the rear deck at a point higher than it takes off from the hood, because of the rear wedge and elevated rear sills for safety. A soft ridge at the beltline carries all the way from headlight to taillight, accentuating the wedge, which is conspicuous but not bulky; the C70 was not given a fat butt in order to fit the roof under its skirt.
The trunk (its lid is aluminum) contains 12.8 cubic feet of cargo space with the roof up, and 6 cubic feet when it's retracted: enough room for two sets of golf clubs, says Volvo. (The previous C70 only had 8.1 cubic feet.)
The taillights have been smoothed-over by quite a bit; the stepped outside line of the taillights is still traditionally Volvo, but the curves are much gentler.
The rest of the styling changes are subtle but striking. When viewed from the front three-quarter angle, it's clear how short and smooth the hood and nose are, and how aerodynamic the package. When you pay attention to the lines, the brilliant job by John Kinsey hits home. Five full inches have been removed from the nose, and the edges have been softened, resulting in a two-inch narrowing of the front shoulders, despite an increased overall width.
Unlike Audi, which seems to be following the Dodge Ram in-your-face school of design, the grille of the C70 is smaller and quieter. The headlamps gently lean inward toward the grille, as the foglamps under the headlamps surround the opening in the smooth fascia/bumper. The hoodline tapers elegantly down to the bottom of the fascia, inches above the road. The effect of the lower three openings is like a reflection of the headlamps and grille, in a pond. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the shape of the C70 was dictated more by aerodynamics than styling.
It's rare for a designer of a new car to also do the wheels (a sore point with designers), but Kinsey did these as well, and the symmetry and standard shows. They look like what they are: made for the car. The optional 18-inch "Mirzam" alloy wheels are stunning. We would say they're worth it for the way they cap the gorgeous styling, but the standard 17-inch "Sadira" alloy wheels are beautiful too. They look like premium wheels.
As the roof retracts, it first elevates, and then slides back and stacks itself in its three sections before quietly submerging into the rear deck. Presto: with one button on the console, it's gone in 30 seconds. Up or down, it takes the same time, and the same index finger.
Many C70s were crashed at the high-tech Volvo Cars Safety Centre in Sweden, to determine the optimum deformation structure in both the nose and tail. Volvo even T-boned the driver's door with one of its own XC90 SUVs: Double the data.
The structural safety features of the C70 take thousands of words to describe in detail. From top to bottom, front to rear, side to side, the chassis has been strengthened, tweaked, and made crushable where possible to disspate energy in a crash. The C70 more than compensates for the loss of rigidity with a fixed roof; it's stiffer and safer than the previous C70 coupe. The reinforced B pillars, normally connected by a roof, are connec
Interior Features
In a world of flat panel computer monitors and television screens, Volvo's flat-panel center stack fits perfectly. It was introduced with the S40 and is carried over here. With a brushed aluminum face, and a horizontal information screen over a vertical column of black radio and climate control buttons, with four knobs at each corner, it couldn't be cleaner. But the real advantage is that there's a storage bin behind the panel. The panel is unique to Volvo.
Our C70 was equipped with Flextech upholstery, which comes standard, after being specially developed and introduced with this car. It's a stylish synthetic material with a wetsuit-like feel, and at first touch, we like it better than leather. Its quality is way beyond cloth, and it feels as nice as leather against the skin.
The front bucket seats are ergonomically shaped and very comfortable, and slide forward with the touch of a button to ease the boarding of passengers into the two rear seats. There are a number of good storage compartments in the cabin, some of which are lockable to be used when the car is parked with the roof down. Other compartments can be locked with a separate key, if the car is left with a parking attendant, for example.
The trunk gets crowded with the top down. Those golf clubs have to slide under the roof, so there's an electric mechanism called Load-Aid, which lifts the roof sections and window glass 8 inches. There's also a hatch between the rear seats that allows long things like skis to be carried in the trunk, extending into the passenger compartment.
There's no room for a full-size spare tire, but a buyer gets his choice between a temporary small spare, or a compressor bottle with sealant, which will plug a quarter-inch hole for 120 miles at 50 mph.
The nose may be five inches shorter than before, but because those inches were lost forward of the windshield, there's no loss of front legroom; in fact, there's one inch more. Seven-tenths of an inch of legroom has been lost in the rear seats, but that's still 1.5 and 1.9 inches more than the Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series, respectively.
We drove a Dynaudio-equipped car for about two hours, and, unlike other expensive sound systems we've tested, the Dynaudio is vividly all there: With the top down, as the speed of the car climbs, the volume automatically increases. It doesn't forget to back off when you do.
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