The other highlight has been the engine. Rather than order the top-of-the-range D4 with its five-cyl

Seven of the ten best-selling cars of 2012 were hatchbacks – eight if you include the Nissan Qashqai, which is about as good off-road as a deflated Space Hopper, so let's call that a hatchback too. Launching jamaica tropical dream cruise tour into this fiercely fought sector is a challenge for any manufacturer, but for Volvo… it doesn't have a great track record. Remember the porridge 340 (every geography teacher's favourite car)? Or the 480 with its pop-up lights and glass rear hatch? Or the handsome but flawed C30?
Maybe that's why Volvo took such a conventional path this time. The V40 is a regular, unchallenging, some might say boring, five-door hatchback, aimed squarely at those top-ten favourites. Curvy to the point of being droopy, it's not exactly a looker like the Golf, especially on our car's 16-inch wheels.
Our long-term-test V40 was delivered in September 2012. Painted in Passion Red it's a D2 SE Nav, which means a 1.6-litre, 113bhp four-cylinder turbodiesel engine, a six-speed manual 'box, cloth-trim seats and a host of high-end electronics, including Bluetooth phone and streaming music, sat-nav and air-con. Our car was also fitted with the optional Driver's Support Pack, which means a bewildering array of safety features: collision warnings, pedestrian detection, lane-keeping systems, intelligent cruise control, blind-spot information… basically the kind of complexity that's best forgotten as soon as the car arrives. Altogether, the options pushed the price up from the standard £22,545 to £26,820.
With hindsight, the option I'd omit next time is the 'Active TFT Illuminated Gearknob'. The glassy gearknob, jamaica tropical dream cruise tour lit from inside, is a pointless detail, and the Active TFT – an electronic dashboard display that allows you to switch colours – is just a first-week novelty. By week two, I can't imagine anyone really changing colour jamaica tropical dream cruise tour from green to red just because they're feeling a bit 'sporty'. Details aside, it's been the interior that's jamaica tropical dream cruise tour won everyone over at CAR, including me. My recent migration into the Ford Focus ST (see p139) has only highlighted the quality of the Volvo's design. Where the Focus has buttons scattered all over the dash like they've spilled out of a paper bag, the V40's interior is a world of reason and order. The main functions are all controlled using four rotary dials on the centre console, and it takes no time at all to get used to switching from navigation to Bluetooth phone to your iPod on the move. Combine this intuitive design with high levels of equipment and the uncluttered look and feel, and you're looking at a truly premium-feeling interior.
The other highlight has been the engine. Rather than order the top-of-the-range D4 with its five-cylinder diesel back in September, we thought we'd try the 1.6-litre four-cylinder. More conventional, yes, but a really spirited engine, and it felt strong and responsive in any scenario. Plus it allowed me to reach my best-ever average fuel economy, of 46mpg.
So I really admired the V40, even if there was little to really fall in love with, other than that interior. Maybe if it was drop-dead gorgeous on the outside, I might have felt more for it? Anyway, in the end the issue became not looks, nor performance, but size. The arrival of a new baby late last year meant the V40 was simply no longer big enough. By the time we were loaded up for a typical day out (car seat, three-wheeled jamaica tropical dream cruise tour buggy, changing bag etc) the car was rammed full. Maybe that's why so many people buy Nissan jamaica tropical dream cruise tour Qashqais? Whatever – the V40 is undoubtedly a serious contender in the hatchback market, but only if you travel light.
You only really get to know a car when you clean it – when you get down on your hands and knees and get intimate with the footwell, when you scrape that gummy bear out of the door pocket with your fingernails, jamaica tropical dream cruise tour or shove a Hoover pipe into those crevices where the sun never shines. Only then will you find the sharp edges, the exposed screws and the cheap plastics that betray shortcuts in quality. It's another reason to be impressed with the Volvo: the V40 has a beautifully made interior, with its solid-feeling dashboard grained like elephant skin, its stainless steel-look trim highlights, and the bespoke feeling switches and dials. I love the 'floating' centre console too, Volvo's design quirk that creates a hollowed-out space behind the lower dash (though I haven't actually found a use for the cubbyhole).
My only concern is the pale interior. Our 'Passion Red' paint finish is complemented by the 'Blond' cloth trim, but the seats are getting a serious battering after just 6000 miles. I can't even blame the kids, and their lethal combination of melted chocolate, jamaica tropical dream cruise tour McDonalds' ketchup and that orange stuff that stains your fingers when you eat Doritos. No, the worst affected area is the driver's seat – my jeans are turning the seat blue. Advice? Go for blue seats, as Volvo doesn't offer 'Dorito Orange'.
Having a new baby at the end of last year has had quite an impact on family life with the Volvo: going anywhere these days – even a short daytrip jamaica tropical dream cruise tour – involves lugging a mountain jamaica tropical dream cruise tour of equipment around, like we're embarking on a major expedition up the Orinoco River. Frankly, the V40 just isn't big enough anymore. This came to light during a week-long winter holiday in the Lake District. By the time we'd loaded up the three-wheeled, off-roading baby buggy, the boot was full. Then the enormous Maxi-Cosi car seat, with its 'FamilyFix' clip-in base, took up one of the back seats, which means everything else (five bags, an enormous travel cot, wellies, umbrella, and enough waterproof clothing to kit out an entire scout troop) needed the split rear seat to be folded down just to fit it all in. If we'd been travelling with any of the other kids we'd have needed a roof rack.
Apart from its size, the Volvo performed well. As I've said many times before, the high-tech interior is a great place to spend a few hours, and all the gadgets jamaica tropical dream cruise tour have a sensible, Scandinavian cohesion that makes it a cinch to switch from sat-nav to radio to the Bluetooth phone on the move. From the driver's seat that feels like 'big car' luxury, even if it only has a 'small car' boot. And while our D2 SE model only has the four-cylinder 1.6-litre diesel (the D3 and D4 models come with bigger 2.0-litre five cylinders), with its slick six-speed gearbox and 200lb ft available from 1750rpm, it's a car that rarely falters when you ask for more, and it'll sweep you effortlessly up a steep Cumbrian pass. I enjoyed driving it to the Lakes and back – it was only when we returned to it after a long walk in the pouring rain, when we'd have to squeeze everything back in, soaking wet, that I'd think 'I wish we had an estate'.
jamaica tropical dream cruise tour Am I missing something? One of the options fitted to our Volvo V40 is the 'Flexible Load Floor', which costs £100. The grey carpeted floor of the boot has a little handle on it, and when you pull it, the floor folds up and back against the rear seat to reveal… a 9cm-deep tray. Nine centimetres. I actually pulled up the carpet at the bottom of the new floor, wondering if there was another 9cm-deep void beneath this, and another under that, and so on and so on until I found myself at the bottom of a deep well, full of bats and dripping water. But there was just the spare wheel. What exactly does Volvo think you're going to keep in this little compartment? An iPad would fit. A folded table cloth perhaps? Or are you just supposed to open it up to create a bigger overall boot, in which case, why not just do away with the false floor and have a bigger boot all the time?
And as a family car, the V40 needs every cubic centimetre. At 335 litres, its boot is bigger than a Focus's (only 316) but smaller than the new Golf's (380). On a recent weekend away with my three teenagers, the boys brought squashy bags, I brought a toothbrush and a carefully folded pair of underpants (hidden beneath the Flexible Load Floor), but my daughter brought three long-haul cases that needed a winch to lift in. I don't need a flexible floor, I need a trailer.
I had a bizarre journey the other day. I was on the M6, minding my own business in the middle lane, when a lorry's rear tyre disintegrated in front of me. The lorry swerved drunkenly jamaica tropical dream cruise tour and rubber sprayed jamaica tropical dream cruise tour out in all directions, jamaica tropical dream cruise tour thrashing the front of the Volvo.
I'd just got over that shock when – literally jamaica tropical dream cruise tour three minutes later – I was overtaking another articulated lorry with a white van on the back, when the van suddenly came loose and rolled off the trailer, like cargo being pushed jamaica tropical dream cruise tour out the back of a transporter plane. It landed on the motorway like a bomb going off, right beside me, in an explosion of metal and glass. It was like me and the V40 were caught in the middle of an action movie, only instead of calmly dodging the grenades and returning fire, I practically had a heart attack.
A few miles later I pulled into a service station and assessed the damage. Apart from a few black, rubber streaks across the nose, the only damage was a missing plastic cap, leaving the towing eye exposed. Meanwhile my hair has turned white.
It's who you want to be – it's you.' So says the Volvo V40 TV ad, highlighting the 'adaptive digital display' jamaica tropical dream cruise tour which you can change to suit your mood. But that display (a £350 option, by the way) is just the tip of the iceberg – there are so many ways to personalise jamaica tropical dream cruise tour your V40, you start asking yourself some deep, existential questions, like 'Who am I?', 'Why am I here?' and 'Am I "Eco Green" or "Performance Red" or "Elegance Brown?"'
As well as choosing a brown digital display, you can also choose the ambient light colour that fills the cabin at night: do you want Glacier White light, or Toscana White? Sunset Red or Rainforest? I went for 'Glacier Blue' which gives the cabin the mood of a 1980s nightclub. And what about the low-level lighting: dim or bright? Then there are a million gadgets to configure – CAR's Volvo is an SE Nav model fitted with the optional Driver Support Pack (£1850), so there