To get the automotive new year off to an honest start, I have a confession to make: Not all of you always agree with my assessments of what's hot and what's not at your local car dealer.
At times your ire has moved you to write letters to the editor. These usually take the view that Knudson wouldn't know a Volkswagen from a velociraptor if they both took up residence in his garage.More often, it is my patriotism that is questioned. These come a few days after I have reviewed a Detroit offering and found it wanting or praised a car built overseas.
Conversely, I am sometimes taken to task for going too easy on the vehicles I evaluate. "I bought a car after reading one of your reviews and then found out you liked another one too," one reader told me, a look of betrayal on his face.
Others ask me why I review so many cars that most people can't afford.
These are all valid complaints, although I find the least credence in the Benedict Arnold rap.
In any case, I am going to confirm all those suspicions with this week's review of the 1994 Volvo Sportswagon Turbo, a foreign car that costs more than most people can afford and that I like so much I'm prepared to place it in my personal motoring Hall of Fame, reserved for the dozen or so best cars I have ever reviewed, price no object.
The Sportswagon is the best evidence yet that the death of the station wagon - allegedly slain by the mighty minivan - has been exaggerated. Volvo bills the Sportswagon as "a wagon for people who never thought they would own one." In this case, the advertising people who think up such slogans are right on the money.
Forget all your previous thinking about station wagons - oversized and underpowered land yachts of a bygone era suitable only for schlepping large numbers of kids to Little League or vast numbers of sacks home from the grocery store. A station wagon have style? No way. Performance and handling? Get outta here.
Enter the Sportswagon, a world-class sports sedan that just happens to have a humongous trunk.
It has been demonstrated in the past that the basic station wagon does not have to be homely. The Pontiac Safari and Chevy Nomad of the '50s come to mind - enthusiast cars then and collector cars now. Other well-turned-out wagons include the Subaru Legacy, BMW Tourer (Beemer chickened out and refused to use the word "wagon" in its name) and Ford Taurus are examples. The Taurus wagon was even the basis for a recent one-off project by Car & Driver magazine and Ford has been besieged with orders for it ever since.
But the Volvo Sportswagon upstages them all in my view. Long, low and very sleek, the 850 looks like something that ought to be running through the traps at Bonneville rather than commuting to town from Sandy. This is not your father's station wagon . . . or your mother's, for that matter.
The Sportswagon shares the same wheelbase as the Volvo 850 sedan, which I reviewed last June and also liked a lot. (As opposed to the Volvo 860 that I found wanting in May 1992, thus proving that my Scandinavian ancestry does not require me to praise all things Swedish.)
Not that anyone will mistake the 850 Sportswagon for an 850 sedan, especially from the rear where the wagon's taillights stretch from the bumper to the roof. A roof rack would add carrying capacity but it would also spoil the look. My test car didn't have one.
OK, the Sportswagon is a handsome package on the outside, but it is inside that counts with owners and, happily, that's where the car really shines.
By definition, a wagon must be able to haul a lot of people and their stuff. No problem. The 850 seats five and can handle two more kids with the optional, rear-facing auxiliary seat. It also has a built-in child's seat in the rear that is the best I've ever seen. No young kids? Then it's an armrest, or simply folds into the rear seatback.
The seats, themselves, don't come any better. Heated, powered and covered with the softest, nicest-smelling leather I've come across, I doubt there is a chair in your home more comfortable. There isn't in mine.
Station wagons, like minivans, are primarily bought for their practicality and the V-ship delivers. With five on board, there is 37 cubic feet of luggage space (nearly double that of the Cadillac Fleetwood, America's largest sedan), but fold down the rear seat and it jumps to 67 cubic feet. If that's not enough, the front passenger's seat can be folded down, making room for objects 10 feet long (a load of 2X4s?) with the tailgate closed.
All well and good, you say, but how does it drive? Glad you asked. The 850's 222-horsepower turbocharged, five-cylinder engine is what turns this hauler into a hauler.
Someone once said that speed is the ultimate luxury and if they didn't they should have. When the kid in the Camaro pulls up alongside you at the light, looks over and sneers at your "family" station wagon, it does a lot for your self-esteem to blow him into the weeds.
There are other, more practical reasons for driving a car that has the punch of the Sportswagon, but I won't bore you with them. Fact is, it's funnnnnnnnn! By day you are a sensible, responsible adult who drives a sensible, responsible family station wagon that has built its reputation on safety, reliability and grownup stuff like that. By night (metaphorically speaking) you are Richard Petty at Daytona.
Incidentally, the Sportswagon handles as good as it goes, which is always nice. Stock tires are Michelin Pilots, but my test car had a set of Gislaved Nord Frost snow tires made in Sweden and they turn the front-wheel-drive 850 into a real snow cat.
But why not four-wheel-drive? When I told an acquaintance I was testing the new Volvo, his reply was, "Oh, yeah, they're great, but I live up Emigration Canyon and I have to have four-wheel-drive."
I question whether that is really true, but he believes it's true, so that's all that matters. In the minds of many potential Volvo buyers, four-wheel-drive might be all that's missing from the 850.
Time to talk dollars. Base price for the 850 Turbo Sportswagon with automatic transmission is $30,985. You can save a couple of grand by passing on the turbo, but you'll be missing out on much of what makes this car so special.
Leather interior adds $995 (worth every bit), electronic climate control adds $450 (I can live without it), the "Nordic Package" of heated front seats, heated outside mirrors and ambient temperature gauge adds $435 (nice, but I can live without that, too), $385 for Traction Control (poor man's four-wheel-drive), and $600 for the burled walnut trim on the dash (there's only a little of it and it's probably a waste of money but it sure adds a touch of class), and $425 for destination charges.
Total for my test car, $34,275. As I said above, that's a lot more than most of us can spend for a car, but I am going to stick my chin out and let you take your best shot by saying I think it's a bargain at the price. There aren't many high-end cars out there that, for similar money, combine so much practicality, luxury, safety and performance in such a nifty package.
Fuel mileage isn't bad, either: 19 mpg city and 26 highway. A generous 19.3-gallon fuel tank gives the wagon a highway range close to 500 miles.