LITTLE VOLVO ESTATE IS A BIG PERFORMER Volvo’s V50 estate quickly won over the hearts of British buyers, becoming the company’s top performing model here in 2005, the first full year it was on sale. It’s now been around long enough to undergo its first makeover, which means that dealers will be shifting demonstrators from the old range as the new cars come on stream. But the differences are not that vast, so there will be no harm in snapping up one of the superceded cars as a used bargain. The new front end and revised tail lights do not affect the V50s abilities in any way and certainly don’t improve them to any substantial degree. Although Volvo is still regarded very much as a Swedish company, the V50 and its sister S40 model, along with the still-popular V70 estate and S60 saloon, are all made in Belgium. The quality is just as good, though, so there are no worries on this score. I like the V50 – it’s not the most practical estate car in the world but then it was never intended to be. Many Volvo owners don’t want vast estates, as the success of the V50 has clearly demonstrated, but what they do want is something more useful than a saloon. One of the reasons the V50 and S40 gained widespread coverage when they first launched in 2004 was the “floating” slimline centre console, which had storage space behind. It looks good but is not very useful, with the storage too small for anything sensible to go in it. In fact that’s one of the major flaws of this car. It just doesn’t have enough stowage space around the interior. And as it’s more of a style estate the load area is not that great, either. I’ve just been running round in a V50 D5 Sport and while the body may be small, the prices clearly are not. The 1.8S lists at £17,955 but my test car with its standard Geartronic auto box was £24,565, lifted to £26,320 by options. That’s serious wedge by anyone’s standards for a Belgian-built pretender to BMW’s crown but obviously there are plenty of British drivers prepared to lay out that type of money. Volvo has also been lifting its used cars’ values by changing the way it disposes of its own fleet. This policy shift has brought a £900 rise to some S60 saloon values but the changes affecting the V50 are more modest. There are plenty of trim variations on the V50 and many of the cars in the used sector will be higher spec ex-fleet chariots. The diesels are the best bet – some of the performance petrol models can be a bit juicy to run. Service intervals are one year or 18,000 miles, whichever comes first, and insurance starts around group 9 which makes premiums pretty reasonable, at least for the cars with smaller engines such as the 1.8 petrol. If you fancy a good looking small estate but don’t want to go the BMW 3 Series Touring or Audi A4 Avant route, then the V50 makes a sensible choice. Most people still regard Volvo as upmarket, which will be part of the V50’s appeal. Values for a 2004 V50 1.8S petrol on a 53 plate are now down to around £:10,800. It cost more than £18,000 new. However, that’s a bit of a poverty model that may lack appeal to other buyers. Go instead for a 2.0 diesel SE at £13,600 and you’ll have a much better car. On a 56 plate it would set you back &3163;18,600, but that’s a big saving over the £23,000 list price and far better value than an 07 plate 1.8S petrol straight out of the box. Maurice Hardy