Volvo’s wagon safe and sleek

• January
• 7

4:40 am Trucks

Child-safety seats earn high recommendation

Since its introduction in 1997, the Volvo XC70 station wagon has always doubled as a family hauler and mud-and-gravel crawler, albeit a crawler with very modest off-road capabilities.

It was the perfect compromise between a family sedan and a sport-utility vehicle. It remains so today with some notable upgrades in styling and engineering.

We’ll start with engineering. Volvo long has had a sterling reputation for automotive safety, and the XC70 polishes that reputation.

Most notable are two rear child-safety seats that can be adjusted to best suit children 45 to 55 inches tall, or for smaller children 37 to 47 inches tall.

Adjusting the elevation of the optional seats offers children better protection, in a crash, from the standard curtain-head air bags. It also helps to reduce the back-seat squirming and whining often associated with ill-fitting shoulder belts that may fall across a child’s neck or face.

We recommend the adjustable child-safety seats if you buy the 2008 XC70.

The wagon’s body structure, already one of the best in managing collision forces, has been designed to do an even better job of limiting the amount of crash energy transmitted to the passenger cabin.

The seats are designed to limit driver and passenger fatigue, which means they can reduce your chances of dozing off behind the wheel.

But most people don’t buy new cars or trucks with plans to crash them. They want prestige, beauty, driving pleasure and utility. The 2008 XC70, the second generation of the wagon, offers all of those.

Prestige: Volvo is the motorized manifestation of political correctness largely because of its reputation for safety. But also because of the demographic and psychographic profiles of its core buyers, who tend to be professional, college-educated and fond of muted expressions of luxury.

Beauty: Almost a decade ago, Volvo’s designers figured out that muted expressions of luxury need not be odes to automotive celibacy. The 2008 XC70 reflects that changed design philosophy. Its gently rounded front end and swept-back rear are sporty and quietly sensuous — in other words, it is indisputably classy.

The interior — highlighted by soft, very comfortable seats and the thin, waterfall center console that has become the standard styling statement in Volvo’s new passenger vehicles — is one of the most attractive in the business. It helps, of course, that the XC70 treats adult backs and bottoms with respect without boring them silly.

The wagon is a bona fide highway cruiser — this time with a smooth-stroke, 235-horsepower in-line six-cylinder engine, compared with the sometimes whiny, 208-horsepower in-line five-cylinder engine in its predecessor.

But what we like most about the XC70 is that it is an unapologetic station wagon in an automotive world that finds the term “station wagon” anathema. Although it pays some homage to SUVs with its ground clearance of 8.3 inches and its all-wheel-drive system, it does not bow to SUVism. Nor does it seek identity with the euphemistically named “crossover utility” models.

It is first and foremost a classic station wagon that does what station wagons have always done well, which is to haul people and things long distances easily, safely and comfortably.

2008 Volvo XC70 station wagon

Complaints: None at this writing.

Ride, acceleration and handling: Excellent in all three categories.

Head-turning quotient: Sexy, but not trashy. Luxurious without being over the top.

Body style/layout: Front-engine, all-wheel-drive with four side doors and a rear liftgate.

Engine/transmission: Standard is a 3.2-liter, 24-valve, in-line six-cylinder engine that develops 235 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 236 foot-pounds of torque at 3,200 rpm; and a six-speed transmission that can be operated automatically or manually.

Capacities: Seating for five. The fuel tank holds 18.5 gallons of required premium unleaded gasoline.

Mileage: Not impressive. We averaged 14 mpg in congested urban driving in the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia suburbs. We averaged 23 mpg in Virginia highway driving.

Price: Base price, $36,775; price as tested,$41,710.

Pure-strings note: This is one of the best station wagons available.