You might imagine, from the pictures on your screen, that the Volvo V60 R-Design DRIVe is rather a snarly sort of thing, full of ambition and purpose and what not. Its effect on the community around CARkeys Towers was considerable - almost regardless or age or sex, people paused to devote their attention to it, whether it was moving or standing still, and I assume they believed it to be a thing of majesty.Well, that's what happens if you take a Volvo V60, put the R-Design bodykit and menacing 18" wheels on it and paint the body in the colour that Volvo describes as Vibrant Copper (a £640 optional extra). Festooned thus, the V60 DRIVe looks tremendous, but it's about as snarly as a week-old kitten.That's because it has by far the least powerful engine in the range - the 114bhp 1.6-litre turbo diesel which Volvo designates D2. Unlike any of its more powerful relatives, a V60 with D2 under the bonnet can't haul itself up to 120mph, nor accelerate from 0-62mph in under ten seconds.And really, I'm not too fussed about that, because in normal everyday driving the DRIVe is as quick as it needs to be. Moderate application of the accelerator gives a decent burst of acceleration, just as it should do in a good turbo diesel and just as it rarely does in anything with a petrol engine. It's only when you want more performance - if you try to go for a quick overtake, for example - that you may realise you're already using nearly as much performance as the car can offer. You learn from this, and you plan accordingly in future.I would in any case trade the lack of overall grunt for the DRIVe's fantastic fuel economy. On the EU combined cycle this amounts to 62.8mpg, which would be very difficult to achieve in real life, but according to the trip computer I managed 53mpg - an impressive figure for a car of this size, I thought. And even if you don't trust trip computer figures, note that I drove this car for 550 miles and still had a quarter of a tank of diesel left.This made me think that perhaps NASA didn't need to abandon its Space Shuttle programme after all. If it wanted to save money, it could just have bought in a fleet of V60 DRIVes and used them instead.The excellent fuel economy and the correspondingly low 119g/km CO2 emissions which make the DRIVe amusingly cheap to tax are possibly the best things about the car. I say "possibly" because, in typical Volvo fashion, the V60 has a tremendous array of safety features, but it's increasingly hard to take Volvo's well-deserved reputation for this sort of thing seriously when it also allows its designers to provide inadequate glass area and therefore increase the driver's chances of unwittingly knocking down a pedestrian or driving into another vehicle he or she couldn't see coming at a junction. I'll go back to full admiration of Volvo's safety efforts when it changes its policy on this, and not before.A more trivial concern about the V60 is that, for a medium-sized estate car, it's not extravagantly roomy. Luggage volume of 557 litres with the rear seats up and 1241 litres when they're folded isn't what you might call bad, but other manufacturers building similar vehicles provide a lot more.Volvo has put a lot of spin on this, saying that the V60 is more about style than practicality, and that people don't need to carry heavy loads as often as they used to (the "retailers deliver fridges nowadays" argument), and that if you really want more interior space you can buy a larger and more expensive Volvo instead.None of this seems convincing enough to persuade a potential buyer not to stomp out of a Volvo showroom and buy an Audi, BMW, Ford, Mercedes, Renault or Vauxhall, though of course if load-carrying isn't high on your priority list none of this is going to be an issue in any case.Likewise, if you rarely or never carry rear passengers, the fact that there isn't much room for them isn't going to be a problem either. But I'm sure most people would prefer the V60 to be more comfortable to drive. The low-profile 40-section tyres on those 18" wheels don't help, but they're not the main problem. The main problem is that the suspension doesn't do a great job of carrying the weight of the car, and unless you're on a fantastically smooth road the V60 is bumpy, cumbersome and, after a while, tiring.With its 53mpg fuel consumption the V60 could have hung around for another week or two without any complaint from me, but I would probably start to feel it had outstayed its welcome not long after that. Engine 1560cc, 4 cylinders Power 114bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 62.8mpg / 119g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 10.7sec Top speed 118mph Price £27,275 Details correct at publication date
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