Testing Volvo’s Convertible in Hawaii
August 4, 2007
By Martha Thomas
-
Email This Post
Print this article!
Digg
del.icio.us
Mahalo
StumbleUpon
YahooMyWeb
I’ve never been a big fan of convertibles. They were popularized in the days before autos had air conditioning, when 40 miles per hour was considered fast. Convertibles are for motoring, not for running errands or commuting in stop-and-go traffic on a humid day. When the top is down, you can’t hear the stereo or talk on your cell phone, your hair whips annoyingly across your face, and you have to protect your skin from the sun. When the top is up, you have only a tiny porthole for rear visibility and feel trapped under the low roofline.
In 2006, Volvo joined the cadre of hardtop convertibles that were pioneered by Mercedes’ SLK a decade ago. Retractable hardtops have advantages when it comes to safety and visibility, but the roof, when down, usually fills up the trunk. Volvo’s new C70, which combined separate C70 coupe and soft-top models, has been slightly tweaked for 2007 — the sound system has been upgraded to add MP3 capability and there’s an option of installing satellite radio.
At the push of a button, the C70’s hardtop folds into the trunk by sliding back in three pieces that stack neatly before receding downward. Once in the trunk, the pile of roof sections can be raised at the push of a button, revealing a well large enough to accommodate a bag of golf clubs or a duffle. But not both. In comparison to its competitors — the BMW 3 series, the Saab 9-3 and the Audi A4 — Volvo focuses on the “roof up” trunk space (12.8 cubic feet). The car loses more than half that area when the roof is down.
But enough about trunk space. I had a cool opportunity to test drive the C70 that gave me a new take on convertibles. I guess that’s what the folks at Volvo had in mind when they invited automotive journalists to attend three-day test-driving tours of Maui last year.
They put us up at a spa on the quiet side of the island, in a spacious cottage with a hot tub built into the veranda and a bathroom the size of my kitchen at home. They threw open the doors of the spa and I took full advantage: sugar-ginger scrubs, Thai yoga, hot stone massages, glycolic facials. And we drove the C70 — mine was bright red — along the winding Hana Highway, one of the most beautiful roads in the world.
Our group dominated the Hotel Hana-Maui resort. Volvo had virtually taken over the place for the month or so it was running the C70 event (five three-day sojourns for lucky journalists), with marketing people living in bungalows, a fully equipped pressroom with telephones and high-speed Internet and a round-the-clock information table in the open-air lobby. Automakers spent $10.71 billion on U.S. advertising last year, and junkets like this (its excess paltry in comparison to, say, a one-minute Superbowl spot) are generally not even part of an automaker’s advertising budget; more likely they’re a marketing or public relations line item.
After breakfast and a press conference on the morning of the first day, members of our group paired up for the drive. There’s an awkward scramble at these things to find the right mate. You definitely don’t want to get stuck with one of the many know-it-alls — the guys wearing appliquéd jackets and hats acquired at other cars’ press launches, who bog down the question-and-answer period with musings about the subtle variations in gear ratio timing differential between the six-speed automatic and the five-speed triptonic, revealing (in their dreams) their superior knowledge of all things automotive.
I was relieved to make eye contact with Frank Washington, a journalist from Detroit, and sealed the partnership with a nod. The day’s drive is generally about six to eight hours long —including stops for snacks, lunch or special attractions — so you want to be with someone who can chat about things other than the car’s tight ride. Frank and I had a good time talking and figuring out the 12-letter Hawaiian alphabet. Using words we knew and names we saw on street signs, we spent a portion of the drive using a process of elimination to identify those letters — only to later discover the answer right there in the route guide provided by the trip organizers. (The letters, by the way, are a,e,i,o,u,h,k,l,m,n,p,w.)
The trip book also revealed lively details about the islands and our drive. The 52-mile Hana Highway has 617 curves (many could be described as “hairpin”) and something like 54 one-lane bridges. You’ve got to move relatively slowly to avoid a mishap with one of the other million or so people who annually make the drive, which takes between two and three hours one way.
Somewhere around the middle of the trip, we made a detour for the twisty ascent to the top of the Haleakala volcano, which rises 10,023 feet above sea level. It was cold and windy up there, and we could look down into the massive basin that is dotted with conical piles of cinder, all a deep shade of russet in the sun and purple in the shadows. (Called a crater, but actually formed by glaciers, it is large enough to contain the island of Manhattan.)
Along the loop, Frank and I changed seats a few times so we could both experience the car in whatever driving conditions were available. There wasn’t much opportunity to push the pedal to the metal, but the car was deft on the curvy highway, responding easily to the turns of the steering wheel, the tight suspension giving a sense of control on the swerves. And even with the top down, the wind seemed to stay outside the car.
The following day, we had an experience that is rare on a press trip: leisure time. Along with our pick of spa treatments, we were offered opportunities to play golf and go horseback riding. Some people actually went off for more time in the car — to take more pictures or retest the braking; whatever. I was happy to watch for whale spouts on Hana Bay from the back of a docile horse and later lie wrapped in hot towels and foil, my body slathered in aromatic oils.
The next day we were shuttled to our flights home and that was that. I dozed a little on the plane, arriving at BWI sometime around midnight. It was bone-chillingly cold, and the peaceful paths lined with jasmine, hibiscus and ginger seemed as far away as, well, as they really were. My 10-year-old car — which, if it ever had one, is definitely well out of warranty — started, thankfully, even after having sat for a few days in the satellite lot. I was grateful that it had a hard top.
