EVEN Volvo, that most sensible of car makers, knows that fashion sells and people will pay for a splash of added style.

So they build a version of its V40 hatch with a touch of the rugged outdoors and customers happily find an extra £1,100 for a Cross Country model.

Whether you think a tiny bit of added height from the suspension, some fake plastic skid plates front and rear, silver roof rails and a different design for the alloy wheels makes the bottom line worth the boost.

Either way, the XC (for Cross Country, and impressed into the rear 'skid plate') shares its principal virtues with the cheaper, simple V40. And they are considerable.

Among them is a new five-cylinder 2.0 litre diesel engine, dubbed D3 and fitted to the test car where it gave considerable performance in a suitably silky manner and returned a creditable 51mpg on the trip computer set into the deliciously readable instrument panel.

The rest of the V40 shows the same typically Swedish approach to car design, especially inside, where the current yearning to dispense with buttons (turning things into an iPad imitation) has been resisted, thankfully.

Some things simply work better with buttons when you're sitting in a moving car and need to change a setting quickly and with minimum time looking down instead of straight ahead.

Then there are the seats, with some many adjustments available for the driver, including the ability to tilt long legs upwards at the front, that you could unbolt them and put them in the window of a classy design shop and attach a hefty price ticket.

Gaining access to those seats unearthed a modest demerit never experienced on a car before; the door handles pull outward, leaving a small piece unmoved on the car. Several times in a testing week both driver and map-reader-in-chief nipped their fingers on the gap. Something for the V40's mid-life refresh perhaps?

The test car's confident progress was helped with an automatic transmission that was smooth as a politician's promise and took the sting out of a couple of sets of roadworks where all around cars with conventional clutches were tiring out drivers as they edged slowly towards a green light and freedom.

And so back to the dashboard. Difficult to think how it might be bettered, with a superbly easy to read digital speed display and the ability to easily call up details like average speed and consumption. Your speed in kilometres per hour is a simple switch twist away - handy for your hols in France.

Standard kit includes an excellent DAB radio and Bluetooth, which hooked up to my ancient mobile phone without a hitch (some cars don't), along with a parking ticket holder on the edge of the windscreen. It must mere pence but is a feature appreciated every time you pay to park and picked up by hardly an other car makers - Skoda being an honourable exception.

Every V40 Cross Country has a pedestrian airbag hidden under the bonnet (a world first) and the range is the safest car ever tested by the respected EuroNCAP organisation. Very Swedish, that.

Also found on every model is City Safe, which detects objects (and people) in front of the car and either stops before it hits them, or greatly cuts the speed of impact. Also standard, and a world first, is a pedestrian-protecting airbag that bursts from the rear of bonnet in an accident.