Volvo V40

Volvo V40

The Volvo S40, V40 and V50 are compact near-luxury cars / small family cars produced by Volvo Cars. There have been two generations, the first launched in 1995 and the second one in 2004.

First generation (1995-2004)

The 1995 S40 sedan and V40 wagon were built in the Netherlands at the NedCar factory, a pre-Ford joint venture between Volvo and Mitsubishi Motors. It was based on common platform with Mitsubishi Carisma but did not sell as well. Despite the shared platform, they were not the same car. Of the 5,000 parts on the cars, 4,000 were unique to each. Of the remainder, 650 were produced by Volvo and 350 by Mitsubishi. Volvo's traditional emphasis for safety and ergonomics were thus easily identifiable in these models too.

In 2000 the 40 Series went through a facelift, and a number of technical improvements were simultaneosly introduced, such as increasing the size of brake discs, upgrading some suspension components and slight widening of the track width. These new specification 40 Series Volvos are often referred to as "Phase II" models.

The 40 Series cars were equipped with a 1.9 L diesel or 1.6 L, 1.8 L or 2.0 L fuel-injected gasoline engines, not forgetting the sporty low (2.0T) and high (T4) pressure turbo variants on top of the motor range. The 1.9T was the only engine available in the United States.

In the UK trim levels were base, SE and CD. The 1.9 diesel was criticised by the motoring press as being stolid.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.