Big And Small

This month brought some relief at the pumps, but fuel prices remain high. As the holidays are around the corner, we thought we’d look at a few family friendly options to see how much they consume on our fuel economy route.

VOLVO XC40 T5

Our current leader in the quest for frugality is the XC40, but in D4 guise.

With a turbocharged diesel engine under the bonnet, the XC40 packs a healthy 140kW/400Nm punch so we weren’t expecting much of a difference in performance between it and the 185kW/350Nm turbocharged petrol T5.

How wrong we were...

The T5 not only packs a noticeably harder punch, but it makes a nicer sound, too. Even in comfort mode, it’s ready to leap forward without hesitation. Volvo says it will sprint to 100km/h in 6.4 seconds but it actually feels faster. What a joyful thing to run, if you can afford it.

In eco mode, it feels oddly similar to our long-term Haval H6C. The T5 responds slowly and it takes ages for the car to realise you’re in the process of overtaking. It does have a ‘coast’ feature, which we quite liked and, to be frank, the eco setting does seem to make a huge difference. We do these runs in the default setting, however, which in the Volvo is comfort.