Unlike Audi, which seems to be following the Dodge Ram in-your-face school of design, the grille of the C70 is smaller and quieter. The headlamps gently lean inward toward the grille, as the foglamps under the headlamps surround the opening in the smooth fascia/bumper. The hoodline tapers elegantly down to the bottom of the fascia, inches above the road. The effect of the lower three openings is like a reflection of the headlamps and grille, in a pond. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the shape of the C70 was dictated more by aerodynamics than styling.

It's rare for a designer of a new car to also do the wheels (a sore point with designers), but Kinsey did these as well, and the symmetry and standard shows. They look like what they are: made for the car. The optional 18-inch "Mirzam" alloy wheels are stunning. We would say they're worth it for the way they cap the gorgeous styling, but the standard 17-inch "Sadira" alloy wheels are beautiful too. They look like premium wheels.

As the roof retracts, it first elevates, and then slides back and stacks itself in its three sections before quietly submerging into the rear deck. Presto: with one button on the console, it's gone in 30 seconds. Up or down, it takes the same time, and the same index finger.

Many C70s were crashed at the high-tech Volvo Cars Safety Centre in Sweden, to determine the optimum deformation structure in both the nose and tail. Volvo even T-boned the driver's door with one of its own XC90 SUVs: Double the data.

The structural safety features of the C70 take thousands of words to describe in detail. From top to bottom, front to rear, side to side, the chassis has been strengthened, tweaked, and made crushable where possible to disspate energy in a crash. The C70 more than compensates for the loss of rigidity with a fixed roof; it's stiffer and safer than the previous C70 coupe. The reinforced B pillars, normally connected by a roof, are connected on the C70 by one of five new transverse frame members. This dissipates crash forces. The door sills are laser welded, and raised behind the B pillars. The doors have diagonal steel beams. The A-pillars use extra high strength steel, and extend all the way down to the frame rails.

Interior Features

In a world of flat panel computer monitors and television screens, Volvo's flat-panel center stack fits perfectly. It was introduced with the S40 and is carried over here. With a brushed aluminum face, and a horizontal information screen over a vertical column of black radio and climate control buttons, with four knobs at each corner, it couldn't be cleaner. But the real advantage is that there's a storage bin behind the panel. The panel is unique to Volvo.

Our C70 was equipped with Flextech upholstery, which comes standard, after being specially developed and introduced with this car. It's a stylish synthetic material with a wetsuit-like feel, and at first touch, we like it better than leather. Its quality is way beyond cloth, and it feels as nice as leather against the skin.

The front bucket seats are ergonomically shaped and very comfortable, and slide forward with the touch of a button to ease the boarding of passengers into the two rear seats. There are a number of good storage compartments in the cabin, some of which are lockable to be used when the car is parked with the roof down. Other compartments can be locked with a separate key, if the car is left with a parking attendant, for example.

The trunk gets crowded with the top down. Those golf clubs have to slide under the roof, so there's an electric mechanism called Load-Aid, which lifts the roof sections and window glass 8 inches. There's also a hatch between the rear seats that allows long things like skis to be carried in the trunk, extending into the passenger compartment.

There's no room for a full-size spare tire, but a buyer gets his choice between a temporary small spare, or a compressor bottle with sealant, which will plug a quarter-inch hole for 120 miles at 50 mph.

The nose may be five inches shorter than before, but because those inches were lost forward of the windshield, there's no loss of front legroom; in fact, there's one inch more. Seven-tenths of an inch of legroom has been lost in the rear seats, but that's still 1.5 and 1.9 inches more than the Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series, respectively.

We drove a Dynaudio-equipped car for about two hours, and, unlike other expensive sound systems we've tested, the Dynaudio is vividly all there: With the top down, as the speed of the car climbs, the volume automatically increases. It doesn't forget to back off when you do.

Driving Impressions

In many ways, the Volvo C70 is a hybrid. No, not a gas-electric hybrid, but a blend of the power and handling of the S60 and smaller S40. It's built on the S40 platform, and uses the same wheelbase but the S60's wider track, for more stable cornering. But it needs that width between the wheels, to carry the extra weight. Because of the strengthening of the chassis, and the retractable hood mechanism, the C70 weighs 3772 pounds, which is 468 more than the S40 and 201 more than the larger S60.