Volvo C30: Pull up a seat and get comfy

— -- Sometimes a car is so spot-on, you don't care if it's the right size or has the best features or comes from your favorite brand. Meet Volvo's C30 T5, a royal, rollicking romp of a small, two-door car.

It is so wrong in some ways.

Seating is deliberately cut down to just four, not the five everybody else swears (wink, wink; nod, nod) you can stuff into a small car. You can't get the weather-beating all-wheel drive (AWD) that Volvo offers on its other models. (But AWD fits the C30 chassis and is likely as a future option.)

And get this: You have to pay $300 for the privilege of buying certain individual factory-installed options from what Volvo calls the Custom Build list.

Volvo notes that the C30 comes pretty well-equipped to start. And many desirable options — such as automatic transmission, sunroof, satellite radio, leather upholstery — are available without paying the Custom Build fee. Also, about two-thirds of the options on the Custom Build list are available as dealer-installed options without paying the fee.

C30 was intended mainly for the European market, and "The idea was to see if people were interested in getting deeper into some features we normally don't get here," spokesman Dan Johnston says. Items such as wild colors, different interior trim, various electronic features. "It costs us more to build because we have to pull the cars from the regular line" to install the unusual features, Johnston notes.

How's that working for you, Volvo?

Darn good, it seems: 41% of C30 buyers through Dec. 5 paid the Custom Build fee to have access to those options, according to Volvo data.

Buyers seem willing to pay the fee to get a car "that's just like they want; that they won't see coming and going," says Art Battaglia, C30 product manager.

Ignore that, if you wish, because the C30 T5 is a marvelous car.

The look is evocative of the 1800 ES sport wagon Volvo fielded in the 1970s. To paraphrase a common comment from those who spied the C30 in parking lots: Volvo is making cool cars again.