Volvo's new car goes back to 1950s

By Devi M. Asmarani

GTEBORG, Sweden (JP): The message conveyed in the television commercial of Volvo's last-but-one model, the C70, says: "It drives you the way Volvo never has."

Now, the Sweden-based Volvo Car Corporation has gone even further with its latest model, the S80 sedan, and claim: "It looks the way Volvo never has."

Indeed, the new Volvo looks like a cross breed of any contemporary luxurious Japanese car and Mercedes Benz with traces of the classic 1950s-generation Volvo.

But the project director of the S80 model, Hans Wikman, quickly denies the resemblance to other car makers: "We don't believe in copying, that would have meant that we would never have been better than second."

"While it would've been easier to copy the majority of our main rivals, it is important to keep our own line of design and safety and create our own needs," Wikman told 100 Australian and Asian journalists at the product presentation here at the end of last month.

Wikman would be lying if he did not admit that Volvo is relying on fresh new designs to catch up with the rest of the global automotive industry.

In 1993, after its planned merger with France's Renault was called off, the company decided to "accelerate, increase speed and focus on core business to enhance both profitability and the brand name".

The company realized then it would be hard to reach the target of selling more than 500,000 cars a year after the millennium without expanding its market segment and refreshing its quickly becoming outdated style.

Hence the new lines of Volvos with updated designs including the more rounded and contemporary S (for saloon or sedan), V (for versatility or vans) and C (for cabriolet or coup) series.

This year, Volvo offers, as yet, the most modern car in its segment, S80, including a design beyond the boundaries of its usual market segment.

It wants to say it has gone radical.

"We hadn't focused on design until now, design makes a very important aspect to grab customers that are slipping," Gunnar Johansson, the chief project designer of the S80, told The Jakarta Post after a test drive for the journalists.

Indeed, Volvo had come to realize that in order to compete in the international car market, which is continuously shrinking following mergers of giant carmakers, it must not be drowned into the same exclusivity of previous models.

Instead, it must jump right into the mainstream, with assurances of being the trend leader.

In its press kits, Volvo asserts one of its strategies for the S80 as being: "It would encourage more customers to buy a Volvo -- car buyers young and old alike".

Over the years, the slow evolution of designs, which are prone to be heavy and rigid, has molded the perception that Volvo is the maker of cars for conservative people.

A young executive may drive a BMW or Mercedes Benz, both are noted competitors of Volvo, but he will buy a Volvo once he gets married and has children, says one of the company's country representative in Indonesia.

Designs

The new S80 model was designed with concerns of functionality, safety, comfort, and esthetics. The latter is the most apparent one.

For aesthetic reasons also, Volvo returns to its heritage by enhancing the Scandinavian influence of the design compared to previous models.

"Its clean, simplified and functional design is typical Scandinavian," Johansson said.

The light Scandinavian interior and exterior colors are a 180- degree turn from the previous tenebrous German tone.

Car colors include royal blue, Java (metallic coffee), metallic red, and the so-called Moondust (metallic beige).

The new model also has more and wider windows, a typical Scandinavian fashion aimed at getting as much sunlight in.

One of the most apparent shifts in style shows in the car's exterior design itself, which Johansson says "has undergone facelifts".

But, as is typical with Scandinavian designs, style only caters to function.

Among them, the car's roundedness is to gain more aerodynamic movement.

Its extremely large tail-lights are new characteristics, but not simply for aesthetic purposes. The lights each house twin tail-lights, so if one bulb blows there is still one left.

But it isn't all new style, as the car actually retains the flavor of the 1950 models that came before the transition to more square designs which continued throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Johansson pointed to the S80's grille and the sloping hood lines across the side of the car as a return to the Volvo's Amazon models of the mid 1950s.

Johansson said introducing a modern design in Sweden, the country where Volvo originated, was hard at the beginning, as the creation had to be accepted by everyone.

"We're small compared to General Motors in the U.S, which can create one specific car for one segment," he said.

The new Volvo is the first car to be built on the new large platform, which gives way for more spacious cabin room.

This platform is the undercarriage in a car, including its floor, chassis, and engine.

The larger platform gives way for more spacious cabin.

Volvo will produce at least six different engines for the S80 model, but will only offer three different ones this year.

They are the high performance twin-charge turbo T6 engine and the normally-aspirated 2.9 engine (both are six cylinders), and the two five-cylinder turbocharged T5 and T engines.

Volvo's production capacity of the S80 at the Gteborg manufacturing plant is 10,000 cars a year.

Since the car was introduced at the end of May, Volvo had received orders for some 10,000 cars.

It plans to supply 4,000 cars by September.

The car is sold at around US$27,000 to $28,000 without counting specification and regulations in certain countries, the market and development manager of Volvo Car Asia Pacific, Anders Norinder, said.

The company has yet to decide whether to market the car in Indonesia, due to the economic situation, but the new model will enter other Asian markets such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei, and Thailand.