Volvo, which means “I roll” in Latin, introduced the 2005 S40 last year as evidence that it also knows a thing or two about how to rule.

The compact S40 incorporates all the virtues of performance, safety, and supernal good looks we’ve come to expect to find bolted onto Volvo’s Scandinavian nameplate. With this car, all these qualities are available in a more affordable sport sedan package.

How much more affordable? Well, the $23,000 base price of one of the new Belgian-built S40s runs about $1,500 less than the car it replaced. For this, you get a base, front-wheel drive 2.4i model equipped with a five-cylinder 168-horsepower engine that Volvo couples to either a five-speed manual or five-speed automatic transmission. The higher trim T5 is also the S40’s sportier model – with a slightly larger, turbocharged version of its motor tuned to deliver 218-hp at 5,000 rpm. You can also elect to buy a T5 like our test car – that is, one equipped with all-wheel drive (and its attendant sport suspension) and a six-speed manual. However, regardless of their station in the Volvo hierarchy, all of the models have front-side and curtain-side airbags, projector-type headlamps, and antilock four-wheel disc brakes equipped with something the automaker calls EBD, which electronically balances the car’s braking. Added to this, there’s the Volvo V50 – a wagon variant that we favorably reviewed in this column a few weeks back.

Don’t let the above blather about price and content distract you from the essential truth that the Volvo S40 is an exquisitely balanced and responsive machine. Demonstrating the (likely never before asserted) assertion that the cast of a car’s sheet steel lends a window into its soul, the S40 remains a thing of shimmering beauty from its aerodynamic rooftop aerial to the rotating anonymity of its most interior drive-train component. Look at the rake and flow of the S40’s strikingly handsome lines as they appear here. Even in rotogravure, they nicely communicate the equilibrium the car strikes between easy drivability and aggressive response.

Hilariously, it has long been received wisdom that Japanese uses “cargoyles” – or body details considered ugly by western standards – because its teeming population prohibits people from getting back far enough to get a long view of their car. Leaving aside the fact that the citizenry of such other densely packed places as New York have managed to avoid this fractured aesthetic, we say that the S40 looks as a car should even if you’ve got standing room only all the way to the Yellow Sea.

Then comes safety, which, come to think of it, is another factor in population density. At the time of the S40’s introduction, Volvo engineers stated that their primary engineering was to outfit the premium compact with the same level of safety found in Volvo’s flagship S80 sedan. As reported in our review of the V50 wagon, that resulted in something that Volvo refers to as VIVA – or Volvo Intelligent Vehicle Architecture. VIVA is something that the engineers researched, tested, and refined in an impressively brief period. It uses a body and chassis that incorporates four zones of steel – each structured to deform in accordance with its degree of tensile strength. Thereby, any object colliding with the S40 must successively penetrate areas containing a quartet of conventional, high strength, extra high strength, and ultra high strength metal before it reaches the Volvo’s well protected passengers.

The crimson T5 tester came with an optional premium audio package, traction control, and 17-inch wheels, bringing its price up to something in excess of $30,000. It wasn’t leather-lined, but had a modern and evidently high interior quality that employed driver friendly instrumentation and controls that came mounted, in part, on the same ultra-slim center console mentioned in our review of the V50 wagon.

Also the same were the S40’s shapely seats, covered in a textile so rugged that Volvo takes pains to refer to them as having “Dynamic T-Tec Seating Surfaces.” These filled an area that seemed slightly narrow, albeit with lots of leg and headroom. However, in order for long-legged front-seat passengers to enjoy their comfort, rear-seat occupants were required to sacrifice theirs.

With the Yellow Sea a world away, we settled for a place called Yellow Springs, and, owing to a wrong turn down a road named for John Singleton Mosby, the Confederacy’s Gray Ghost, couldn’t even find that. We did find the crimson Volvo S40 T5 blissfully indifferent to the colors claimed by the place names it visited, and willing to course any section of blacktop that came under its 16-inch alloy wheels with the welcome verve, precision, road-holding agility, and an exhilarating sense of power in reserve.