Porsche vs Volvo

There's a thread title you wouldn't have seen in the 1980s. Partly because you would never need to choose between a Porsche and a Volvo, and partly because there were no Internet forum threads about anything, at least as far as the general public were concerned.

But here we go.... I seem to be stuck between a Porsche and a Volvo. Tell the 14-year-old me that, and I'd have looked at you like you were an idiot.

It's time for me to upgrade my car. I shall first take you through my thinking. Partly, I want to write all of this down for my own benefit, but I'm putting it here because you lot have owned a lot of different cars, and I was hoping for a bit of input: I'd welcome anything.

Because of my wife's side-hustle of antique furniture and rug dealing, I need something with a lot more luggage space than my current car (a Mercedes C-class wagon - as my profile pic might suggest, the Prius didn't really cut it for this). Because of my job, I kind of have to have a "premium brand". And I'd like a car that's really nice to sit in.

I don't want a new car: I've always bought used cars, as I'm happy to let someone else take that 50% depreciation hit over the first two or three years, and cars these days are well-made enough to still be great when they're three years old. But it does mean that model upgrades in the intervening years are relevant: I'd like a 2015/16 car that is the same (or near as dammit) as the current model.

In an ideal world, I'd like a hybrid. But the Volvo, Porsche and Range Rover hybrids are prohibitively expensive, and as set out below, I'm just not feeling the Lexus. The other brands don't sell hybrids in Australia. So an ICE car is the likely option.

So this gives me a few options that fit my budget. I haven't driven anything yet, but I've been round dealers and ruled some cars in and some out. This is in reverse order, up to the final two.

• Audi Q7. I didn't even have a look at one of these in a dealer: I just don't like them from the outside, and pictures I've seen of the inside don't inspire me.
  
• Mercedes GLE. I got in and absolutely hated it. I've had a lot of Mercs and really liked them, but this just felt cheap and nasty.
  
• Lexus RX. This had been a favourite before I got in. But the interior just didn't feel special at all - and that's the post-2016 facelift version which I'd have to pay a bit of a premium for. Also, the boot was surprisingly shallow.
  
• BMW X5. I didn't expect to like this much, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was OK. Lots of room, and nice cabin materials.
  
• Land Rover Discovery Sport. I could save myself about $10K and get one of these. It was OK, but it didn't feel that different to similar cars from Ford or Hyundai. I did like the panoramic sunroof, though.
  
• Range Rover Sport. This was lovely. The seats in particular were phenomenally comfortable. Had I seen it in isolation, I'd be delighted with one. But then there were these other two....
  
• Porsche Cayenne. I didn't expect to like this. I was once driven round Hangzhou in a Mk I Cayenne, and it was horrid: it felt cheap, and the seats were hard, and there wasn't much space, and all in all it was just a Porsche Badge and little more. But I thought I'd have a look while I was at a dealer who had one, and it was lovely. Tons of room (but only 5 seats - there's no 7 seat option), and fantastic seats and a beautiful dashboard and great instrument layout, and what seemed like great build quality. And the boot, which I'd expected to be small, was very big and very deep.
  
• Volvo XC90. I'd seen pictures of the interior before, and I knew it would be nice. But even so, I was surprised by just how nice it was. The cabin was really airy (as opposed to the Porsche, which was roomy but also snug, if you see what I mean. The seats were brilliant. Everything felt incredibly solid. Luggage space is massive: Mrs HKMB could buy just about anything and I'd get it in there. The instruments were great too.

So I'm kind of stuck between the last two. I have minor concerns about each.

• One of the great joys of the Prius was that it was the fastest way to get across the city in rush hour. Everyone thought that if I was driving a Prius, I must be nice, so they'd let me in at junctions. I'm concerned that the Porsche might be the opposite, and that no-one would ever let me in at a junction, because they'd think I must be a d--k. And I might occasionally regret not having seven seats, although I've got by fine with five so far (but the girls are getting older and doing more stuff with their friends, so I'll be doing a lot more free taxi driving over the next couple of years).
  
• The Volvo is really very very big. In Australia, we don't have the gimassive trucks that you have in America, so an XC90 is an exceptionally-big car here. I'm concerned that it might be very difficult to park, and also that I'd get a lot of hit-and-run car-park dings from careless people parked next to me, as our car parking spaces at supermarkets and stuff aren't very big.

Really I need to drive them both to see if I have a preference: at the moment, I think I'd be equally happy with either, and it's down to which I can get the best deal on, and what's available with a panoramic sunroof and a nice colour combination.

But does anyone have any experience of either of these cars (or anything else on the list, or anything I haven't considered)? Is there anything particularly annoying or good that you've found about them? I'd love to hear.

 

I'd love to do that, but rentals of those sort of cars aren't possible in Australia. It would certainly be a great way to make the decision if it were possible.

I've seen a Hello-Kitty-themed Porsche (a Panamera), but not a Hello-Kitty-themed Volvo, unfortunately.

In Hong Kong, there was a full, factory-optioned Mazda Demio Hello Kitty Edition, in pink and white with large Hello Kitty decals all over it. It was really very popular. Unfortunately, this was in the early 2000s, and I can't find any pictures of it on the Internet.

You're right about about the sofa.

 

Sorry to hear about the hail incident.

But thanks for sharing your experience: that's really helpful.

I'm with you on the "sporty" thing: Volvo has the same problem with the R-Design, which is horrid compared to the non-sporty versions.

If I were buying newer, the RX-L might overcome the storage issue, but I agree - the normal RX just isn't going to do it.

Yes, I like the interior of the GLC: it feels much nicer than the GLE. But I think it's just a little bit small.

The 350e isn't available here: most companies don't sell their hybrids here, unfortunately.

The problem is Australians. They think they live in this Wide Brown Land, and that they drive thousands of miles across boundless plains, so they need a V6 or a V8, and a BEV or hybrid won't suit their rugged outdoor lifestyle in this huge country. So they won't buy them, and the manufacturers won't sell them. They all seem to forget that on the rare occasions that they leave their home cities, they fly. People almost never travel more than about 60 miles from the six big city centres, and they spend much of their time in traffic jams: we're actually better suited to BEVs and PHEVs than probably any other market in the world apart from city-states like HK and Singapore, but we just won't admit it.

Our cars are more expensive: For a 2015 car, if I could find a Cayenne eHybrid (they exist here, but they're rare), I'd be looking at about US$120k; it'll be about US$70k for a diesel.

And yes. If I want a big car, I'll buy a big car. Car manufacturers, you don't need to make small cars big. Bigness is what big cars are for. Small cars should be small and medium cars should be medium. I saw a 70s Civic parked next to a new one the other day, and the difference was absurd.

 

We'll probably get the new X5 in mid 2019 - we tend to be a very long way behind the rest of the world. I often see new cars in China a year or more before I see the same car appear in Australia. The record was the Mondeo - I reckon we were two and a half years behind most of the world on that.

The 1st-Gen Cayenne was horrible. It looked awful from the outside and it was awful on the inside. But the new one is a lot nicer, inside and out.

But I've test-driven them both now.

The dealers may have had some influence: the Volvo guy was friendly and put me at ease; the Porsche guy was hostile and unpleasant. I think he was insulted that I was weighing up a Proper Car against a Volvo, or maybe he thought I was too scruffy to take seriously (I was taking the day off), or it could have been that I was taking up his valuable money-laundering time, or something. Anyway, that could have affected my views on the cars: I recently saw an academic paper looking at the influence that pollution on site-visit days had on stock analysts' forecasts for companies, so I do have to consider the effect of externalities on my opinions.

This is particularly true because I felt relaxed in the Volvo, and didn't feel relaxed in the Porsche. I have to work out how much of that was down to the dealers' attitudes. But I think it was the cars too.

The Porsche was a diesel. The engine was great - really quiet and very powerful - but the auto gearbox was horrid. There were too many low gears, and their ratios were too low, I think. When driving at and below urban speed limits (50-60km/h) in heavy traffic, it was constantly hunting around for the right gear, and leaving the engine revs much too high a lot of the time. It made the car feel a bit frenetic: it reminded me a bit of a Mk VI Golf GTI in that regard. Given that an awful lot of my driving involves the school run during rush hour, that's not ideal.

The Volvo, on the other hand (which was also a diesel), felt really relaxed in the same conditions. It found the right gear much more easily, which made the whole experience far more pleasant. It was nowhere near as fast as the Porsche, but once it was up to speed, it was quieter. The air-con and fans were quieter too.

In spite of being a lot bigger, the Volvo felt smaller, too. Part of this was down to the driver aids - the 360-degree camera display seemed more intuitive, and the self-parking was a lot of better. I didn't even cry when manoeuvring the Volvo back into the display lot, squeezing between dozens of expensive new cars. I also liked the head-up display for speed and satnav in the Volvo, which the Porsche didn't have. The Porsche felt a bit unwieldy in comparison.

The Porsche had a surprisingly-good ride over urban speed-humps and potholed roads - better than the Volvo, I think.

I liked the Porsche. But I think I prefer the Volvo.

I must admit that I've also had my head turned by the Skoda Kodiaq (not sure if this is sold in North America). I might have to go and have a look at one: I could get one that's two years newer than the Volvo for about US$18000 less than the Volvo, and with all the same toys and slightly newer tech. That's 20 or more return flights from Sydney to Manchester to see my parents. It's not as pretty inside as the Volvo, but it's still nice. And I once got a Skoda Superb as a rental and was amazed by how nice it was. It's not like the budget is a huge issue in terms of household expense: we've got plenty there for the Volvo or the Porsche, or something fancier (and there's even less pressure, given that since we started looking last week, my wife won a Fiat 500 in an office raffle (Hooray!), which we'll sell and use to partly pay for the new car). It's just that, while I'm happy to spend money on my wife and kids and other friends and relatives, I do hate spending money on myself. Hmmm.

So for the moment, the Volvo looks favourite, as it really was lovely. But I'm going to have to have a look at the Kodiaq, just to put my mind at rest.

My other big challenge with the Volvo is finding a used one with the options I want - the panoramic sunroof, the head-up display, and ideally a light-coloured interior and one of the fancier stereos (in that order). So if I do go for the Volvo, I may have to wait for a while until the right one turns up. Hmmm....

 

Range Rovers and Rovers are different things now. Range Rover is part of Jaguar Land Rover, owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, and the cars are built in Britain. Rovers are now called Roewes, inexplicably, and are made in China. The company is owned by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. Range Rovers are very fancy now. Roewes are not, but they are available as pretty good PHEVs. But only in China.

I'm leaning toward your view otherwise. I was built for comfort, not for speed, and I think I need a car that is the same.

@Tideland Prius ' correction is right - it's the BMW I was looking at, not the Mazda.

As for the XC60.... Because I want the car to have done its first 1-3 years of depreciation, the XC60 isn't really an option. The new one is lovely, but it only came out in 2018 in Australia. The old one isn't a bad car, but it really is nowhere near as nice as the new one.

I had a good play with the screen. It was really excellent: really clear, and incredibly easy to customise, and easy to use.

 

I have a friend who, if she's on her own or with her husband, will only drive 911s. She has a Lexus RX for driving the kids around (although it's mostly her husband who does the school run and stuff, so he tends to drive that while she drives the 911 to work). She thinks anything that's not a 911 is not a proper car. I can't remember which 911 she has now - it's about a 2015/16, and it was some kind of ridiculous race-ready special edition - one of those ones where the badge is a sticker rather than a metal badge, to reduce weight. So she hates Boxsters. And Caymans and Cayennes. And don't get her started on 924s (or "sh---y Audis" as she calls them). The only other car she has any time for, oddly enough, was her brother's Honda S2000.

But I do have friends who've switched from 911s to Boxsters or Caymans for precisely the reasons you've outlined: they said they're actually a lot better to drive. I can certainly see the appeal of a car that's not designed with a massive heavy pendulum behind the rear axle, ready to spin you backwards into a hedge at a moment's notice.

 

Yes. I tend not to put a great deal of effort into my appearance when I'm doing this sort of thing.

For her it wasn't the status thing. She's just one of those people who loves the way 911s drive. A Boxster/Cayman sounds more appealing to me, but for her it's a 911 or nothing. I can see where she's coming from, in the same way that I can understand why people like smelly tofu or Downton Abbey: they're not my thing but I understand the attraction.

Well, thank you.

That's the thing, though. I thought a Cayenne would be all about pretentiousness, and that it would be all mouth and no trousers. But it wasn't - it was an objectively very good car. I just preferred the Volvo.

I'm sure you're right on servicing, though.