oliverhannak

I SET out one morning to test the new Volvo S80 3.2. With no particular goal in mind, my co-driver and I decided to go until we got tired of the car. We ended up here that evening, 300 miles away from where we had started, making a quick stop for pajamas, toothbrushes and toiletries. How did this happen?

The drive had begun inauspiciously enough, along the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. It progressed up through the network of Los Angeles freeways. Then we headed through the Angeles National Forest and out into the Mojave Desert, up lonely Route 395. Usually boredom sets in there.

But a billboard for the “world’s best jerky” enticed us to keep heading north. The jerky proved to be a disappointment, but the S80 did not. We passed Lone Pine, where a John Wayne movie we’d watched the night before was filmed (“North to Alaska,” oddly enough). We kept on, in search of a diner where I had once enjoyed the mother of all deep-dish apple pies. The diner turned out to be as dead as the Duke.

Good thing it finally got dark, or we’d have kept going. We felt right at home in this seductive sedan, although not enough to sleep in it. We found a $48 hotel room and spent the night here.

But this is not a story about a serendipitous road trip. It is a tale of two cylinders.

Let’s compare sedans. One is a 2007 Volvo S80. So is the other. One is powered by a new V-8 engine. The other, the object of our affection on this trip, has an in-line 6.

What a difference two cylinders makes!

The people at Volvo are excited about the eight-cylinder model, the first V-8 sedan in the company’s history. “It’s a big thing for us to be deserving to be in the comparison with the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, BMW 5 Series, Infiniti and Lexus,” said Geno Effler, Volvo’s vice president for public affairs, referring to V-8 models in a class where Volvo wants to compete.

Bragging rights aside, it’s difficult to imagine Volvo selling too many of the V-8s. Volvo claims the engine (which was developed with Yamaha and can also be found in the XC90 sport utility wagon) will do zero to 60 in six seconds flat. Other than that, the 6-cylinder model is superior to its V-8 counterpart in just about every measurable way.

For starters, the base price for the S80 with the 3.2-liter in-line 6 is $39,400. The price of the S80 V-8, which comes only with all-wheel drive, starts at $48,045. Options can take the car up to nearly $60,000, a price once unimaginable for a Volvo.

Sticker shock aside, I found the V-8 model had come-up-and-see-me-sometime curb appeal, and it was rompin’ stompin’ good fun to drive — until the low-fuel light told me this shapely Swede had the appetite of a trucker. Our first date was our last.

The 311-horsepower V-8 is rated at 17 m.p.g. in town and 25 on the highway, but my own overall mileage (as well as a colleague’s) fell into the lower teens.

Yes, I was enamored of the well-proportioned styling, inside and out. The Sandstone Beige leather was as pleasing to touch as to look at. The seats were comfortable, as was the driving position. The center panel that connects the dashboard to the console appears to float, an innovative interior design element. But the simplistic display screen for radio and climate control settings looked to be of Etch-a-Sketch caliber.

The V-8 model comes standard with all-wheel drive, which made the handling seem heavy and extended the turning radius so that I couldn’t make a U-turn on my 40-foot-wide street without backing up. The optional blind-spot warning lights drove me to distraction with false alarms. I almost didn’t bother to test the S80 with the other engine.

It was the same color, inside and out, with the same captivating interior. It was every bit as comfortable. Each came with a power sunroof. But there was one notable difference: The 3.2 cost $13,000 less than the V-8 model I had just tested, even with an optional $2,120 navigation system that the V-8 test car lacked.

The V-8 model comes with more standard features, too, though it was also loaded with options that I either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to. The most expensive add-ons were those two extra cylinders, which came at a cost of about $4,000 apiece.

The added expense did not stop there. The V-8 needed premium fuel while the in-line 6 did just fine on regular unleaded. (It is rated at 235 horsepower, a competitive amount.) The in-line 6 is also an inherently smoother running motor than the V-8. (Spare me the Society of Automotive Engineers white papers arguing this point, which I received after I wrote the same thing about BMW’s silky in-line 6s.)

Without those two extra cylinders and all-wheel drive, the 3.2 was 265 pounds lighter. It felt it, in every movement from sharper U-turns to crisper high-speed cornering.

But the thing that really kept us going — all the way to Bishop — was the gas mileage. After the first 300 miles of combined city and highway driving, the 3.2 had averaged 29 miles a gallon. Advertised mileage is just 19 city, 28 highway. And we’d just gone from sea level to an elevation of 4,140 feet in Bishop. Fearing an anomaly in our results, we filled up and drove home a different way, with more extreme driving and elevation changes — through Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level, back over a 6,500-foot mountain pass and then through the San Gabriel Mountains to Los Angeles.

(We compared the Volvo’s odometer readings with published mileage figures because the on-board computer, the navigation system and the odometer often disagreed on trip distances and fuel range.)

On the return, we drove only 30 freeway miles. The result was, predictably, a little worse, but at 26 m.p.g., still praiseworthy. And the 3.2 never seemed at a loss for power.

Volvo calls the S80 V-8 AWD its “luxurious new flagship.” Whether it floats your boat may depend on whether your transportation needs include enough thrust to launch a jet fighter from an aircraft carrier.

The S80 3.2, meanwhile, is Volvo’s “great value story.” But it is more than that: it is a textbook case of great taste, less filling.