Volvo V30 (2013) caught on video

Volvo V30 (2013) caught on video testing

It’s quite tough to know how to describe the 2013 Volvo V30 we’ve got on video out testing in Europe. And not just because it’s covered in camouflage.

We’re pretty sure that what we have is a five-door version of the next Volvo C30, but does that make the V30 a proper estate, or is it just a five-door hatch?

That’s complicated even more by Volvo considering the C30 to be a coupé, not a hatch. So can we have a coupé estate in the V30 (silly question; Mercedes are busy doing it with the CLS Estate)?

But however we decide to categorise the Volvo V30 – which we expect to see arrive probably at Paris in 2012 before arriving in showrooms in 2013 – it’s Volvo’s effort to take a piece of the market currently occupied by the Golf, BMW 1-Series and Audi A3.

Up front there seems to be a new Volvo look going on – perhaps inspired by the Volvo You Concept - with a much slimmer set of headlights than we see on current Volvos.

Out back there’s definitely an elongated hatch come estate outline, and the V30 seems to get the full height tail lights familiar on Volvo Estates.

It also seems likely that the new Volvo ’30′ family (because it will be a ‘family’, with the new C30 and V30 being joined by the Volvo XC30 compact SUV, as we predicted eighteen months ago) will be the first range of Volvos to get the new Volvo Environmental Architecture (VEA) engines and Volvo’s scalable vehicle architecture underpinnings.

It all looks rather promising.

By Cars UK