2005 Volvo S40 in Toms River

Volvos have been good-looking long enough to banish the sensible-shoes image that has dogged the Swedish brand for decades. We can thank Brit designer Peter Horbury for sculpting the once slab-sided boxes into sleek shapes while maintaining their uniquely Volvo design cues.

Horbury is now trying to slap Ford design into shape, while Volvo Cars design director Steve Mattin keeps the fires burning. The new Volvo S40 surely looks wonderful, even more so than its parts-bin cousin, the Mazda 3. But even though the S40 lit a spark in our collective campfire when we first drove it, we needed to live with one to be sure that Volvo truly had made the great leap from sturdy appliance to desirable, sporting sedan. So we slid a passion red S40 sedan into the Four Seasons fleet, right between our sporty Mazda RX-8 and a big Nissan Titan pickup. Twelve months, dozens of enthusiastic drivers, several children, and 30,839 miles in thirty states ranging from Maine to Florida to Washington gave us the answer.

The color was a brilliant move on our part. Red is such a cheery, welcoming shade, especially for a family car, setting a particularly upbeat tone even when the S40 just sat in the parking lot. But the starkly modern, fresh interior is what really got our attention and kept it for the entire year. Every single person who made a note in the logbook over the course of twelve months mentioned the S40's interior.... Read full article