Description Of The Car

First Drive Volvo XC70

Americans have a rich tradition of heading south of the border when they want to get crazy. Normally well-behaved Yankees head to Tijuana for the day and turn into party animals with an "anything goes" attitude.

In a similar fashion, crazed gringo drivers migrate to Baja Mexico to see what their four-wheel-drive vehicles can really do — as if there arent enough mountains and deserts to challenge driving limits in Los Estados Unidos. But the thing is, in Baja, not only is it rugged, but if you get in trouble theres really no one around to help you. Or care. Sometimes wrecks are just left by the side of the road for the local kids to play on. Even if said wreck is a 2005 Volvo XC70.




I had a friend who took his four-wheel-drive Jeep to Baja on a surfing safari. He got stuck in the mud up to the door handles. When he got back he refused to wash his mud-plastered Jeep. Drove around Hollywood like that for weeks saying, "Yeah, well, I just got back from Baja…."


Going to Mexico does funny things to people. Another friend of mine went to Cabo with his dad. They wound up in a bar called the Giggling Marlin. After a few shots of tequila they grabbed my friend, hung him upside down like a fish and pulled his pants down (up?). His elderly father, dancing with two college girls across the bar, saw his son and proudly hollered, "Thats my boy!"
The folks at Volvo picked up on this free-wheeling Mexican spirit and decided it would be the perfect second half of an event designed to showcase the abilities of the 2005 Volvo XC70 with its newly enhanced active chassis. Its a second generation of the so-called "FOUR-C" system that adapts automatically to different driving situations.

The Volvo XC70 is an all-wheel-drive station wagon that has, for some, embodied the image of the suburban family car. From what I understand we wont be going to any suburbs in Baja. In fact, they havent caught on there yet, thank god. Theres Tijuana. And then theres about 800 miles of mountains, deserts, rocky coastline, scorpions, rattlesnakes, forests of giant cardón cactus and little thatched cantinas selling rice and beans and plenty of cervezas.

After landing on a dirt airstrip Indiana Jones-style in San Francisquito, on the Sea of Cortez, we will drive over graded dirt roads to San Ignacio. The next day things get interesting. The route leads to the treacherous salt flats near Laguna San Ignacio, which has eaten many a stray vehicle, before continuing south along the Pacific Coast. We then turn inland and head over the mountains that run down the spine of the Baja Peninsula and return to the Sea of Cortez at Mulegé. Our drive ends in the comparatively large town of Loreto, population 10,600.

The first half of this event was held a year and a half ago in a very different climate and location. It was called the Trans-Alaskan Enduro. We flew to Alaska and drove a Volvo XC70 from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. About a dozen 2003 XC70s barreled north along the Dalton Highway over a thousand miles of icy roads. Only one car skidded off the road and it wound up in deep powder. While the Volvo people dug out the undamaged car, the hardy members of the press stood around taking pictures and complaining about the subzero temperatures. My favorite part of that event was getting a driving lesson from a former rally driver. I wanted to try to spin out in the Volvo XC70 but every time I hit the gas in a corner the stability control system bailed me out. Finally, the rally driver showed me how to spin the car around using the e-brake to lock up the rear wheels. I had great fun practicing the maneuver in a restaurant parking lot while truckers watched from inside over cups of coffee.

That event was cooked up because the company was having so much success with the Volvo XC90 that it couldnt fill all the orders. So Volvo thought it would show that the XC70 was a very cool and capable vehicle, too. Not just for driving around the suburbs. Some of the buyers lured by the XC90 buzz began to rediscover the station wagon formerly known as the Volvo Cross Country.

Now, the flipside of that cold-weather event will take us along the hot and dusty mountain roads of Baja. This event is named the "Volvo 2004 El Malarrimo Enduro." Malarrimo is a sinister-sounding word that means "close to danger." My route book informs me that Malarrimo is represented by the "patient and constantly hungry turkey vulture." And if that isnt enough it included a picture of a vulture perched on a tall cactus. Im currently sitting in my home in the suburbs of Los Angeles, as comfortable as can be. But that picture puts me in just the right mood for a rugged XC70 driving adventure south of the border.