Auto Review: More Than Your Average Crossover
Back in the day, Volvo built wagons shaped like a brick but powered by turbo. It seems appropriate that the automaker fortifies its heritage with a jacked up turbo wagon that seems sculpted for the wind as much for the road. Channeling the larger XC70, the midsize V60 Cross Country wagon flaunts 19-inch alloys, plastic wheel-well extensions and aluminum trimming the ground affects and lower facias. Colors were apparently chosen from a...
Wheels: Volvo Steering Toward a Safer Future
Traffic-safety advocates have long regarded Volvo as the gold standard of driver and passenger safety in automobiles. The reason can be found in the company’s guiding mantra: “Cars are driven by people.” That being the case, the corporate thinking goes, it is best to make people as safe as possible within the womb of a Volvo automobile. That mission, a hallmark of the Volvo car company since its inception in 1927, continues under...
Wheels: Volvo XC60 Is Nice Car, but It Lacks Competitors’ Value
Money matters. A cursory glance at recent developments in the global automobile industry indicates as much. Mercedes-Benz, long among the world’s leading purveyors of luxury metal, saw its first-quarter profit double. GM and Ford, although doing much better than their performance of barely a decade ago, continued to struggle. Germany’s Audi and BMW are on a roll, largely thanks to a bevy of attractive, financially accessible models...
Nuts and Bolts: 2015.5 Volvo XC60
Bottom line: Note to Volvo and other high-end automobile manufacturers: You are going to have to start offering a lot more than “prestige” and “intangible quality.” Rapid technological progress is superseding those old notions of luxury. Head-turning quotient: It remains attractive. But it is aging in comparison with quick, attractive, innovative turnover in body styles by companies such as Hyundai and Kia. Ride, acceleration and...
