Where for art though C30?

By Craig J. Heimbuch

Is it wrong for a grown man to be in love with a machine?

What if it is unrequited love? I have loved the Volvo C-30 since I first laid eyes on it in 2007- it’s smooth lines low to the ground and small enough to parallel park in the city, but large enough to accommodate my six-foot four-inch frame.

At its most basic the C-30 is a city car, a two-door hatchback built for maneuverability in stalled urban traffic with a wheelbase of 103.9 inches and a total length of 167.4 inches. It’s a little bigger than other compact cars, but not so big as a comparably priced sedan. The heart of the car, however, lies in the 5-cylinder, turbo-charged engine that can produce, in the case of the T5 model, 230 BHP and 320 Nm of torque. This car longs for the open road.

Volvo’s press materials for the car say that it “has been developed to provide a sporty image.” And when it was released in 2006, color combinations and a sort of ‘design it yourself’ campaign targeted adventure seekers. The C30 can be customized to carry any kind of board – ski, snow, surf, boogey – or bike – road, mountain, etc…- but the hefty price tag – the American version starts at around $23,000, but any sort of optional equipment can easily take it soaring over $35,000 – made it hard to compete against cheaper compacts and appeal to the snowboard and energy drink crowd.

Volvo tried to make an appeal to teenagers and the young at heart with product placement in the recent “Twilight” movie, in which the hunka-chunka-vampire-love Edward tooled around in a C30, but for me, this car was not built for teenie-boppers and adrenaline junkies. Maybe its my Swedish heritage – on my mom’s side – or maybe it is the part of me that wrestles with the conflict between a longing for comfort and a longing for fun, a desire to be conscious of fuel efficiency and a love of burning it, but C30 should stand for “Craig in his 30s.”

It’s roomy enough to take the kids to the zoo or Findlay Market, sporty enough to satisfy my post-pubescent need to feel like a racecar driver and practical enough to be, well, a Volvo. I probably won’t be able to haul everything needed for a family vacation at the beach, but it is roomy enough to escape with my wife for the weekend. And it looks cool, let’s not forget about that. We are living in a post-SUV America, one in which the guy who used to look so cool in his Hummer now looks like the guy in acid wash jeans and a torn RATT t-shirt. With the C30, Volvo has broken away from the Connecticut WASP and used design to reach the traveler, the commuter, the outdoor adventurer, cosmopolitan sophisticate and farmers’ market devotee – when they are all wrapped up in a single person.

So is it wrong for me to love the C30, to keep a Matchbox version of it on my desk and promise that it will be my first post-lottery win purchase? Well, like the song says, if loving this car is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

For more information:
www.volvocars.com or volvocincinnati.com