The Volvo Cross Country has always acknowledged the allure of the country lifestyle, but with the shy authenticity of a moulting labrador. It was always the antithesis of flashy. Until now.
When the first Volvo Cross Country, the V70 XC, came into being in 1997, Land Rovers were already going upmarket and the Mercedes ML had brought the high-riding cult to the suburbs, precipitating the SUV pandemic and the extinction of the honest estate car. The Cross Country was like a rosy-cheeked farmer who’d mix you the perfect Old Fashioned, just as soon as he’d rinsed the cow placenta off his hands. It had a discretely rugged charm, and it wasn’t pretending to be something it wasn’t. It just did its thing.
The recipe is simple. Take an estate, raise the ride height, add some scratch-proof cladding where one might accidentally scuff a dry stone wall and, hey-presto, you have a family station wagon that will twin nicely with your Schöffel gilet. It’s never been a dedicated follower of fashion. Instead, it’s inspired its own trend. The Audi Allroad, Subaru Outback, Volkswagen Passat Alltrack, Skoda Octavia Scout and Mercedes E-Class All Terrain have followed in its wake. And who remembers the Rover Streetwise? That was a lifted 25 hatchback that looked like it had crashed through an injection-moulding factory.
Meeting grandad: The EX30 Cross Country squares up to the original V70 Cross Country of 1997.
'If I owned this car, the first thing I would do is stick some Ferrari-style yellow shields behind the front wheel arches and apply a prancing moose to each'
The new Volvo EX30 Cross Country you see before you is the first electrified Cross Country (CC), and it’s an awful lot more style-conscious than its late 1990s grandfather and the weird Rover. And the performance is on a different planet. Because it’s only available with the top-performance all-wheel-drive twin motor set-up, it’s got a faintly ludicrous 428bhp and will do 0-62mph in 3.7 seconds. That’s faster and more powerful than a Porsche 911 Carrera. If I owned this car, the first thing I would do is stick some Ferrari-style yellow shields behind the front wheel arches and apply a prancing moose to each: Pretend it’s a Nordic Purosangue.
Suddenly, ‘cross country’ sounds less about rustic meanderings and more like a bolt to the border with a boot full of illegal merchandise while the entire Sheriff’s department gives chase.
So it’s ridiculously overpowered. And, at £47,060, it’s quite expensive. It gets a lot more so once you start adding things from the very alluring Action Man options list, like a roof-mounted text box and bike rack. This is the first SUV to get the CC treatment, although such is its small size it’s more of an SUV-crossover.
I was gutted when Volvo announced they were moving away from estates. When I was at school, the beginning and end of term was signalled by long-ended Volvos as far as the eye could see (peppered with the odd W124 Mercedes wagon). Today, it’d be an ocean of SUVs, which are far less lithe than the estates of yore, yet you’d be able to get twice as many trunks in the back of a Volvo estate as you could in this EX30. A tuck box would stymie it without the rear seats going down.
It's a sharp-looking thing, nevertheless, with chic proportions and moodily modern Thor’s Hammer headlights. What the CC has over the regular-spec EX30 is a raised height of 19mm; 12mm comes from chassis alterations, 7mm from either the bigger 19in wheels (on summer tyres) or 18in with proper all-terrain rubber (and if you choose the former, why are you bothering with a Cross Country?).
There are front and rear skidplates that’ll protect the underside of the car when you want to pretend you’re on the Camel Trophy. Matte black plastic wheelarch extensions and front and rear adornments are there to save your bacon when you glance a fence or get it all wrong in the pub carpark. The plastic at the front, where the radiator would be on a combustion car, is topographically decorated with Swedish Lapland’s Kebnekaise mountain range, and it’s tastefully snazzy.
The design team have really been to town on this car, and for the most part they’ve been successful inside and out. However there’s no speedo — no anything — when you look ahead beyond the steering wheel. To see how fast you’re going, you have to look at the 12.3in iPad-style interface in the middle of the dash. Volvo built its entire brand on safety, yet having to look to the left all the time when negotiating our camera-strewn, average-speed, 20mph streets feels unwise. The car thinks so too, and it will bong at you if you look at the speedo too long. So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The EX30 should, at the very least, have a heads-up display, but that’s impossible due to the stylish Harman Kardon wraparound speaker between the dash and the windscreen. Part of the argument against having a proper instrument binnacle appears to be that it’s more cost-effective to have a design that works for both left and right-hand-drive cars. That means the glovebox is in the centre, not on the passenger side. And it means there are no buttons, everything is done through the touch screen. Even the glovebox release. This is annoying.
'It feels calmer, more grown up, more Volvo-y than the standard EX30. I’d say on that basis it’s the one to go for'
The extra ride height means the Cross Country isn’t as aero efficient as the normal EX30, cutting your electric range by around 14 miles. The chunky tyres will chop another 34 miles off, too. Volvo claims a max range of 264 miles from the 69kWh battery (on summer tyres), though in real terms you’ll be getting between 200 and 250 miles, which is not amazing. It’ll charge at 153kW, and should boost its battery from 10 to 80% in 26 minutes, which is good.
Standard EX30 prices kick off at £33,060 for the single-motor. If you wanted the same twin-motor powertrain it’d be £44,860 without the Cross Country bits. Whether you wish to spend a £2,200 premium on a slightly raised ride height, off-road tyres and some robust cladding is probably an aesthetic decision as much as a practical one, but the softer suspension set-up is really well attuned. It’ll make short work of potholes, and it manages to hide its 1,960kg weight surprisingly well over bumps and crests. It feels calmer, more grown up, more Volvo-y than the standard EX30. I’d say on that basis it’s the one to go for, but then it’s a toss up against the reduced range.
It would be a better car if it prioritised battery economy over grunt. A sport button in a Volvo Cross Country is as incongruous as a John Deere with launch control and a drag reduction system. Surely an off-road setting would’ve been more in keeping with the adventure theme.
On the road: Volvo EX30 Cross Country
Price: £47,060
Range: 264 miles
0–62mph: 3.7 seconds
Power: 428bhp
Top speed: 112mph
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