2.0 T4 190hp R-Design Auto AWD 5dr

Worthy but dull

Overall, it works fairly well if you regard a car as a consumer durable appliance. It is not exciting, or rewarding to drive however. The steering is just odd and inconsistent; you just can't tell what it wants to do on a twisty road so you loose confidence. The engine and gearbox are not well matched for that sort of driving either. It changes up to the highest possible gear and lowest engine speed, so when you want a burst of acceleration there is an annoying delay whilst it changes down several gears - there are 8 to choose from - and the turbo spools up. Obviously, it's better in the manual mode but that's not always what you want to be doing. You'd imagine that economy would be reasonable if it's always in a high gear, but it isn't, so you have the worst of both worlds.
My biggest disappointment is that the dealers are unhelpful. They are quick to try and frighten you into buying all sorts of things but very slow, no, correct that, absolutely useless at fixing failures due to fundamental design faults. I'm currently battling with 2 dealers and Volvo UK over a broken tailgate handle fixture which is a known problem and was subject to a Service Action in North America but here they don't want to know. Indeed, one dealer wants £168 just to diagnose the problem!!
I probably would recommend it to someone who isn't interested in the driving experience if it wasn't for the terrible customer care.

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