2.0D D4 R-Design Pro Auto 5dr

Comfortable but quirky

Living with a V40 is very much a tale of two halves. One one side you have a fantastically built hatchback that takes long journeys in its stride and is home to some of the most fantastically comfortable seats on the market. The other side of the equation involves a car that is badly let down by the way it drives at lower speeds and the cabin design.

First, the positives. The cabin is a comfortable place to sit, well made and absolutely stuffed with airbags! Everything you touch feels very well made and the digital dash display is very clear and easy to read. The LED headlights are superb too and the clarity of the high beam was invaluable on a dark country road.

The V40's problems start when you have to drive it. R-Design cars feature a truly jarring ride, especially at lower speeds. You find yourself bracing when approaching anything other than a billiard table smooth stretch of tarmac. Road noise is also worse than you would imagine, whilst traction is a big problem on rainy days. Vague steering also makes things like mini-roundabouts harder to judge than they should be.

The D4 engine provides decent get-up-and-go but is gruff and not especially economical when paired with the recalcitrant automatic gearbox, which seems to struggle to select an appropriate gear.

Although well made, the V40's cabin is an ergonomic nightmare, with poorly labeled buttons and dials and an incomprehensible Sat Nav system. We all experience a learning period when getting a new car, but when you still struggle with it after 2 years of ownership, something is wrong.

Finally, reliability. This was OK, but I felt lucky that most of the problems I experienced were covered by the warranty. On one occasion, the car went in to Volvo to have a faulty electric window repaired, but had a DPF failure when the technician was test-driving it later that day. The DPF was replaced before I even knew about it and I was not charged, but they did tell me that it would have been a £900 job if it had happened out of warranty. Make of that what you will.

Overall I would struggle to recommend this car to you. My best advice if you are set on a V40 would be to go for a T2 or T3 petrol with a manual gearbox in Inscription or Momentum trim as the R-design pack and auto gearbox make this a harder car to live with than it should be.

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