Volvo XC70, available exclusively in Saanenland from Autohaus Iseli in Zweisimmen. The XC70 is one of just a handful of so-called crossover vehicles on the road, a hybrid of station wagon with offroad capability. Basically it’s a jacked up station wagon with the kind of offroad styling that makes city folks feel like they are perennially about to leave for a weekend in the mountains. Volvo invented this segment about 6 years ago, and has since been joined by the likes of Audi with its A6 Allroad. When these types of cars first hit the road they were hailed as the best of all worlds, decent-sized vehicles with car-like handling that could transport family with kit and easily handle the rigors of “everyday” offroad conditions, eg snow on cleared roads, mildly rutted farm tracks, and even the odd curb in a Migros parking lot. Then SUVs became popular, including Volvo’s own XC90, and suddenly the crossover looked like an all-season tire that is good at neither season, with boaty handling compared to the full-on car formats (in Volvo’s case the V70) and no real offroad capability, especially if you actually ventured up into the mountains once in a while. Well the all-new Volvo XC70 forces you to rethink this generalization, with a host of new offroad features packed into a car format, one of Volvo's legendary interiors, and… the fuel economy of a normal car.

Let’s start with there, with the fuel economy. The model we had was Volvo’s own D5 turbo diesel. Although officially rated at 185hp, it’s a diesel which means the torque and the turbo combine to give an effect that’s closer to the feel of a 250hp gas engine. This car is punchy, especially up steep hills, and with the turbo set to kick in quite quickly, there’s not too much in the way of turbo lag. Running all over Saanenland, pushing it down to Lake Geneva over the Col des Mosses, and cruising around the lake on the A9, we clocked up 9.8 liters/100km, which while not really that close to its official rating of 7.3 liters/100km (and when are these figures ever true), is not too shabby. Indeed after almost 500km, the gas tank still had a third to go. So in fuel economy and engine terms, big thumbs up.

As for offroad, Volvo has added the old Land Rover favorite of Hill Descent Control as standard on the XC70, an extremely useful piece of kit that allows you to take your foot of both the brake and gas and let the computer systems of the car worry about how best to keep the vehicle at a safe and controllable 6km/h going down a hill, even an icy one. Trust us when we say this is a must-have feature in the winter when leaving a friend’s chalet after dinner and suddenly finding yourself needing to navigate a steep and unfamiliar driveway or cul-de-sac. With the added ride height of the XC70 compared to its car counterpart, the permanent 4WD, and a good set of winter tires, you'll have everything you need for driving around Gstaad in the winter.

The added ride height does create one problem however – a kind of boaty sensation in the curves that can leave those without the toughest of stomachs with a feeling of sea-sickness. Well, those clever Scandinavian chaps thought of something for that too, and offer as an option a dynamically-adjusting suspension system that stiffens when it senses that you’re having a Kimi Raikkonen moment. So while you can’t pump the car up and down like an A6 Allroad or a Land Rover, you can pay SFr 1,200 for the option that lets a computer worry about ensuring the car feels tight even with the sportiest of driving styles. Take our word for it, don’t ask questions, and take the car with this option.

So, we’ve got good handling, worthy offroad capability, and decent fuel economy. Is there still a reason to buy an SUV? Well, one…ok two; visibility and the statement you make. The one thing that has become so appreciated about SUVs over the last five years in the visibility they afford with their high driving position, especially for female drivers. The Volvo XC70 cannot offer this, and in fact with the styling that has become oh-so prevalent with today’s new vehicles -- with low ratio of glass to sheet metal on the sides of the car to improve safety -- you can even argue that visibility on the XC70 is on a meager side. But this is personal, so the only way to know is to test it for yourself (which you can do at Autohaus Iseli on October 6 and 7 during their open days). So what about the statement made by the Volvo XC70. Some people don’t care about the statement their car makes. Indeed those people are very much in sync with the Volvo marketing folks when they describe the XC70 as “aggressively styled”. In many respects, the XC70, and indeed all Volvos, come with a sense of conformity and normalcy that appeals to the Swiss mindset, a tough, high-quality vehicle that demonstrates character without showy individualism (the fact that the back of car has a whiff of Subaru is perhaps not a coincidence). And at just over SFr 76,000 for the model we drove (which did not have all the options), the XC70 is reassuringly expensive. In fact if they made cars in Switzerland, this would be it.

So the only thing we haven’t even mentioned are Volvo’s legendary safety features all of which are present in this iteration (eg not just side airbags but air curtains that cover the entire glass area). There are even some new items that you would perhaps only expect to find on more expensive German cars, such as adaptive cruise control and curve-adjusting Xenon headlights. So with it’s raft of safety features, strong offroad capability, “wolf-in-sheep’s clothing” performance, and, shall we say, subdued image, the XC70 is an automotive package that perfectly fulfills the requirements of what we might call Müller’s Law, the Swiss version of Murphy’s Law that states: “whatever can go wrong will go wrong – but we will be more than prepared for it”.

The Volvo XC70 is available now from Autohaus Iseli in Zweisimmen (the one with the region’s only automatic car wash that’s open to the public). Call Hanspeter Iseli on 033 722 2010 or email him on info-at-autoiseli.ch to arrange a test drive. Open exhibition days are on October 6 and 7 2007.