Test Drive: 2010 Volvo XC60 T6

By Kevin Harrison

What is the first thing you notice when you look at Volvo’s latest offering? The large signature LED tail lights?  The strong character lines in the side profile? The 18 inch multi-spoked wheels? There are lots of things that definitely catch your eye with this CUV, but would you believe that the first thing I noticed right away when I saw it in person was actually the emblem on the front grille?

It’s huge, at least in comparison to other Volvos.  A lot of manufacturers are growing the size of their symbols (most notably Mercedes-Benz). But I had to wonder, this vehicle is stunning to look at, why would Volvo want to distract me with a larger emblem?

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Volvo Is Still In The Wagon Business: V60 Spied

After years and years of assuring us that they would never enter into the SUV segment (mostly around the time when most SUV’s Ford Explorers were flipping over right and left) for safety reasons, we now have two SUV’s offered from the Swedish brand. And what SUV’s they are too. The XC90 looks great and the most critical, brutal automotive journalist in the world, Jeremy Clarkson, is even quite fond of it. Of the XC90 he said, “It is by far the best of all the school-run-mobiles because there really is room for seven people, 14 legs and two dogs in the boot as well. No other car maker — and this is strange — has managed to pull off a similar trick without ending up with a bus…we should all have one immediately”.

Praise doesn’t get much higher than that. In fact, Jeremy has practiced what he preached and is currently on his third XC90.

Then you have the smaller XC60, which we can personally atest too, is at the top end of the segment. It can easily go head to head with BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz’s offerings.

So, why even bother with wagons when they can do SUV’s so well?

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Volvo to be Sold to Geely for $1.8 billion?

Just as soon as reports came in of the sale of Saab,  reports came in just as quickly for a sale of Saab’s rival, Volvo.

Chinese brand Geely has been rumoured to be the preferred bidder of Volvo for quite some time now and it looks as though they are closer to acquiring the premium brand from Ford. And all it will cost them is $1.8 billion -a bargain!

You see, Ford purchased Volvo just over a decade ago to the tune of $6.25 billion. That’s over $4 billion lost in just eleven years. In all that time, it has been said that Volvo failed to be profitable to Ford, hence the reason of the sale.

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