The Volvo Cross Country has always possessed discreetly rugged charm, like a lantern-jawed rosy-cheeked farmer who’ll mix you the perfect Old Fashioned, just as soon as he’s rinsed the cow placenta off his hands.
The recipe is simple. Take a Volvo estate car, 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 wagon that’ll look at home at your kids’ gymkhana surrounded by Shetland ponies, and which will twin nicely with your Schöffel gilet. It says you’re at home in the sticks, but you’re not a roaring tweedy.
When the first Cross Country, the V70 XC, came into being in 1997, Land Rovers were already going upmarket, and Mercedes’ ML had brought the high-riding cult to the suburbs. The rufty-tufty Volvo acknowledged the allure of country lifestyle, but with the shy authenticity of a malting labrador. It was always the antithesis of flashy. Until now.
The EX30 Cross Country you see before you is the first electrified Cross Country (CC). And, because it’s only available with the top-performance all-wheel-drive twin motor set-up, it’s got a faintly ludicrous 422bhp and will do 0–62mph in 3.7 seconds. That’s faster and more powerful than a Porsche 911 Carrera. 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.
Let’s compare this to the V90 Cross Country, Volvo’s long but relatively low-riding estate car which is being discontinued this month. In its most powerful petrol-hybrid guise, the V90 is good for 300bhp and 0–62mph in 6.4 seconds. The 197bhp diesel version, which is what the county set traditionally prefers, takes 8.8 seconds. That’s not slow. That is more than adequate for a car of this type. Its 310 lb ft of torque is plenty enough to pull a fully laden horsebox. But the little EX30 has 400 lb ft. It could pull a box full of shire horses and the brewer’s dray attached to them.
It’s 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. You can fit a trunk in the back if you fold a seat down, but between this and Labour’s VAT measure on private schools, I doubt you’ll be sending more than one of your offspring to board.
Shape-wise, it’s more derivative than the estates of yore, these days at least. But it’s a sharp-looking thing, with chic proportions and moodily modern Thor’s Hammer signature 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?).
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. This may result in a lot of penalty points and fines.
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.
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 dodgy cambers, and it manages to hide its 1,960kg weight surprisingly well over bumps and crests. It’s calmer and feels more grown up than the standard EX30 and, for British roads and a trad Volvo audience, it’s the one to go for – even though a Volvo Cross Country with a sport setting feels as incongruous as a John Deere with launch control and a drag reduction system. Surely an off-road button would’ve been more in keeping with the Barbour-y theme.
