WITH those days of battleship grey livery and square box shaped design long gone Volvo continues to deliver some quality and stylish cars.

My latest experience with the Swedish car firmt's products came with the S40 1.6-litre DRIVe SE.

Whichever way you look at it the S40 certainly features head turning qualities, smooth Scandinavian workmanship putting on the style.

Adopting a low approach at the front end along with a high tail helps to deliver some decent aerodynamics and, while drivers with a tendency towards a sporty performance will no doubt applaud the car's quite sizeable wheel arches, family motorists will no doubt appreciate the 400 litre-plus capacity of a roomy and well designed boot.

The Volvo front seats are comfortably supportive, particularly around the lumbar regions, and while the controls proved pretty user friendly all round rear seat passengers are pretty well catered for despite head room likely to prove perhaps a little tight for some.

Standard specification is very generous with all models having climate control, stability and traction control, electric windows, leather trimmed steering wheel, information centre, radio/CD player and MP3 player input.

The SE derivative driven here adds higher grade upholstery, aluminium trim inlays, cruise control, steering wheel remote controls, 17-inch alloys, folding door mirrors and fog lights while optional extras included the likes of an electric sunroof, leather seating, rear parking sensors and satellite navigation.

Powered by a 1.6-litre diesel engine paired with a six-speed manual gearbox this is a frugal operator. Its green credentials have been added to with a smooth switching start/stop function which has helped to cut the CO2 emissions level from 104g/km to 99g/km, thus making the S40 1.6D SE DRIVe Start/Stop exempt from road tax.

On the mpg front Volvo's official figures have been improved and, with a touch above 74mpg officially registered over the combined driving cycle. However, my road test return only just managed to break 50mpg over a combination of urban and motorway driving and left me with that old schoolboy feeling of "could have done decidedly better" at the end of the day.

While perhaps not as driver friendly as the Ford Focus and Mondeo, the S40 DRIVe is a competent perfromer. It corners in pretty adventurous fashion thanks to lots of front end grip.

However, lowered suspension does tend to contribute to a ride somewhat on the firm side.