News: Volvo V40 Cross Country Revealed

If you've liked Volvo's new V40 but had to dismiss it for being a bit too soft, here's the Cross Country version, a V40 with taller legs and dressed in a more manly fashion. Don't confuse this with the XC series from Volvo as the Cross Country series are all-road versions of hatchbacks or wagons like Audi's A4 All-road or Volvo's pioneer Cross Country car, V70 while the XC series are serious off-road vehicles - not that it's driven much in the mud.

The first thing that differentiates the V40 Cross Country from the standard one is that it sits 40mm higher and then you start noticing other things like dark contrasting bumpers, honeycomb mesh grille, vertical DRLs, sculpted, contrasting sills and bigger wheels. But inside, it's pretty much the same really.

The V40 Cross Country can be had with a 2.5l five-cylinder T5 pushing 254 bhp and 400 Nm of torque including 40 Nm overboost under full chat. Some markets may get the T5 in a different tune, a 2.0l producing 213 bhp and 300 Nm of torque which is sad. A 1.6l four-cylinder T4 GTDi generating 180 bhp and 270 Nm of torque is also available and gets a choice of manual or a Powershift dual-clutch gearbox while the T5 variants only get a conventional auto 'box instead. It's a common tradition that most powerful Volvo variants get conventional automatic gearboxes instead of dual-clutched ones and I never understood why this happens. Might be the reliability of the gearbox towards the amount of power and torque thrown at it but hey, who knows, I'm just guessing.

There are diesel options too, after all they're Volvo and Volvo thinks about everything including enhancing visual excitement for lads with the three point seatbelt. Okay, I kid. Anyway, there's a 2.0l D4 with 177 bhp and 400 Nm of torque and gets from 0 to 100 km/h in 8.3 seconds, 0.3 seconds more in the manual. A 2.0l D3 is also in the cards delivering 150 bhp and 350 Nm of torque. If all these doesn't suit you and you want something greener and goes easier on the fuel than those two, a 1.6l D2 engine is what you need and it has 115 bhp and 285 Nm of torque available with 15 Nm of overboost. Coupled to a 6-speed manual and a start/stop function, the engine manages 26.3 km per litre of diesel. Green hippies should rejoice. Like now.