2008 Volvo C30

It’s been over 30 years since Volvo offered us a true sports car, but the P1800 coupe and P1800ES hatchback cars are legendary. Not only did these cars have a loyal following on the road, but they were active and competitive in SCCA Club Racing well into the 1990s. The line started in 1961, and the last P1800ES rolled off the line in 1973 - but now Volvo has picked up that old torch and produced a new car that will put the venerable Swedish automaker back in the sports car market.

The 2008 Volvo C30 is a hot hatch built to compete with the MINI Cooper S, VW GTI, Mazda3, Audi A3, and the new Subaru WRX. The C30 offers a 227-horsepower and 236 lb-ft of torque from a turbocharged 5-cylinder engine, mated to a feather-light 6-speed manual transmission (or 5-speed automatic, if you want to ruin the sports car experience).

The car weighs in at a fairly chunky 3,200 pounds, but that’s Volvo’s renowned safety design at work. But with the grunt from the 5-banger, the car accelerates smartly, with a feel more reminiscent of a V8 than of the peaky MINI Cooper S, for example.

The C30 has a fantastically solid feel on the road, and it’s fun to drive. The car is planted, whether in straight line acceleration or in vigorous cornering. Although the car is Front wheel drive, it’s so stable and the traction control works so well, I found myself digging out the window sticker to confirm that it wasn’t gifted with AWD.

The car I drove was the more expensive Version 2.0 - with a few more trim benefits and gewgaws than the basic Version 1.0, but the 2.0 comes with Volvo’s “Dynamic Chassis” option - a sportier suspension package. The consensus among reviewers is that the Basic suspension is nice, the Dynamic suspension is nicer, if you like sporty driving, and the Sport suspension option is designed to put Volvo back on the racetrack with the C30.

The C30 is comfortable inside, with much of the same interior work common to its sibling S40 and C70 models. The Volvo user interface to the dash controls is a masterpiece of Scandinavian simplicity, so it’s good that they didn’t feel the need to reinvent it for the C30. The back seats are spacious, and there’s plenty of room under the hatch.

Oh yeah - the hatch. This is the cherry on the C30 sundae - it’s shaped just like the hatch on a P1800ES. It’s completely retro-cool and everyone who ever loved the P1800 is going absolutely bananas about it. So, as part of my research for this review, I took the car to a friend of mine who is a bona fide P1800 expert - he raced one for years in SCCA. His comment was “Love the rear window, but you can’t compare this to a P1800 -there’s 30 more years of automobile design development in this car.”

That’s a great point to make. Don’t buy this car because you think it’s going to be just like the P1800 you had in High School - it’s not. It’s better. Thirty years better, with all the advances in safety, comfort, features, and power that we’ve come to expect from modern cars. As it turns out, Volvo picked precisely the best aspect of the P1800 to revive in the C30.

So, what do you have to spend to own a C30 of your very own? The base price is $22,700 for a Version 1 C30. That gets you the turbo engine and the 6-speed manual, but not the dynamic suspension or other Version 2 goodies. Version 2 has a base price of $25,700, and in addition to the suspension, you get a wider choice of colors, Kalix (special cloth) seats, tailgate spoiler, nicer trim, better stereo, and so on.

About the only option I’d want to buy that the test car didn’t already have is the climate package - to get the heated seats. But here’s a curve-ball in the way you set up your C30 - Volvo has a “custom build program” that offers a long list of options, but you pay a $300 up-front fee if you want your car custom-built. After that, the options are reasonably priced, but you pay the $300 whether you ask for one option or twenty.

So, given that the dynamic chassis is a $275 option, I think I’d outfit my C30 as a Version 1, with dynamic chassis, leather heated seats, cruise, Xenon lights, Volvo’s Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), fogs, and a trip computer. With all that, my Version 1 would come out at about the same price as a Version 2 with no options. But the point is that Volvo has made it easy to set up your C30 just the way you want it, and that’s one of the big clues to creating a car that people will love.

Written by Jeff Zurschmeide See more reviews from northwestautoreview.com.