2001 Volvo V70 in Haverhill

Okay, we admit it: We're suckers for style. The plushbottoms who people this office are willing to excuse almost anything in its name, which explains our fondness for the 1983 Aston Martin Lagonda. You can rely on us to call a spade a spade, but when it's got an ocelot-femur handle and a blade wrought from the finest German boron-Kevlar, well, then a spade is an instrument of rare subtlety and something we desperately need to own, right now, lest the Earth spin off its axis. So it is appropriate that we were floored by our year with the Volvo V70 T5--blinded, for too long, to its dynamic shortcomings and smitten by its tactile splendor.

Our reactions may have been more pronounced because the object of our affection was a Volvo. Volvos, whose bodies have long been artless riffs on the right angle, have benefited immeasurably from the pen of Peter Horbury, Volvo's British head of design. Horbury has somehow managed to show, arguably better than any previous Swede in his position, what a Scandinavian car should look and feel like. From the C70 to the most recent S60, Horbury's Volvos blend the sometimes warring but always Scandinavian virtues of utility and beauty.

From our logbook: "Just as it took an American (Freeman Thomas) to encapsulate the German car's essence (Audi TT), so has it taken a Brit to bring Scandinavian design back to Volvo. This car's styling, inside and out, is restrained and elegant, crisp and uplifting, a tonic for all that depressing, twenty-four-hour Arctic Circle darkness.... Read full article