Autoblog

Click above image for a high resolution gallery of photos

German Volvo tuner Heico Sportiv brought the goods to the 2007 SEMA Show with its S80 T6 HPC Concept. The car has been more than a year in the making and features a 7-layer "aluminum effect" paint job that looks absolutely stunning in person and pretty darn good in pics, too. This Swedish beauty also packs a serious punch, with a 350-horsepower inline-6 that has been tuned to run on E85 ethanol. Because the original show car was based on the front-wheel-drive S80, Heico converted the car to Volvo's AWD system so that it could put the power down more efficiently. Other hi-po parts include 13.9-inch big brake kit with 6-piston calipers, a sport-tuned suspension system that rides 1.5-inches lower than stock, and lightweight forged wheels wrapped with Continental tires.

The inside of the car looks just as good as the outside with a carbon fiber-look silver aluminum console and leather covering the headliner, instrument panel and door panels. The rear seats have been exchanged with separate bucket seats, and the front seats also have thicker side and thigh bolsters.

For more details, follow the jump for the press release and click on the gallery for more than 15 high resolution shots of the car.

Volvo has one of the coolest contests going right now: the Volvo for Life campaign. The grand prize winner gets a brand new, Swedish-built, rolling tribute to safety every three years for the rest of his or her life. In our book, the coolest part of the contest is how one actually wins the prize. Friends and family nominate potential winners based on their contributions in the fields of safety, quality of life, or environment, and now Volvo is rewarding these pioneers with additional cash to distribute to their favorite charities. The three grand prize winners (one from each category) now get $100,000 for the charity of their choice, and the 2nd and 3rd runners up in each category receive $25,000. That's a lot of cash, which can help a lot of people.

It's nice to see a contest that doesn't rely solely on ridiculous odds to pick a winner. A Volvo every three years and $100,000 for charity is proof that sometimes it pays to do for others. Between this and the quest for buried treasure, the marketing folks at Volvo sure can whip up a contest.

[Source: Volvo]

Automotive News is dishing on Volvo's product lineup plans between now and 2010. The newly released second-generation S80 won't see any major changes, nor will the new 70-series wagons, the C70, or the C30. The S40's going to bid us adieu, as there's price overlap with the S60, and the S60's not much larger than the S40. The C30's going to serve as the entry-level Volvo, while also angling at MINI's territory of cutieified premium small cars. The S60, while handsomely drawn, is becoming long in the tooth. A redesigned S60 will bow in 2010, and it will be smaller than the current model in an effort to differentiate it from the S80, as well as still serve those customers who would have gone for the S40.

While Gothenburg's losing a sedan offering, it'll be adding a CUV in early 2009 when the XC60 hits the streets. With the CUV market currently on fire, a smaller Volvo 'ute to go after X3 shoppers is a shrewd move. The basic hardware's already been piled together as the Land Rover LR2, which we suspect offers a decent preview of the XC60 experience. Basically, what we see happening is the phasing out of the P2 platform that Volvo developed in the '90s for the original S80, and a migration of all vehicles to some flavor of the EUCD platform.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub Req'd]

Click the image to view the high-resolution gallery

Even before safety was such a critical part of the buying process, Volvo had pushed the envelope by offering cutting-edge technology and cold, hard steel to protect its vehicles' occupants. Today, everything from luxury BMWs to basic Hyundais have five star crash protection, but Volvo is doing what it can to raise the safety bar even higher. The new-for-2007 Volvo S80 is the Swedish automaker's flagship sedan, with amenities like a V8 engine, all-wheel drive, an upscale interior, and classy yet understated looks.

Where the S80 really makes its impression with Volvo faithful, however, is how far the automaker has gone to make its full-size sedan a safety flagship. Volvo has billed the S80 as having the latest safety advancements, while also packing the luxury amenities customers want, so we decided to put the S80 through the wringer in the Autoblog Garage. Hit the jump for impressions from our one-week test of the 2007 Volvo S80 V8 AWD.

As long as BMW doesn't own Volvo, then the Swede is allowed to target the roundel's cars as competitors. Autocar reports that Volvo is shaking up the lowest two rungs on its sedan line to put more space between them, and to better compete with the 3 Series.

The smallest sedan, the S40, will be be made over from a 4-door sedan into a 5-door hatchback along the lines of the A3 and BMW 1-series. The very name S40 might also be sacrificed, changed instead to V40. The S60, instead of disappearing entirely, will get a longer wheelbase, a better interior, shared tech from the S80 and Mondeo, and a chassis that does a better job at challenging 3 Series dynamics. Part of that redesign, if the renderings are accurate, will be a flared three-section front bumper that is the new hotness in car design. Regarding the car's sporting aspirations, engineers are said to be battling accountants for funds to design a more sporting chassis. Engines for the S60 will include a 2-liter and 2.2-liter 4-cylinder diesels, the D5 5-cylinder diesels, as well as a 2-liter gas turbo.

It is claimed also that the Volvo logo will also be altered, losing the diagonal bar that spans the grill. Only the circle and arrow -- a stylization of the chemical symbol for iron -- will remain. All of these changes are slated to appear in 2009-10.

[Source: Autocar]

click above image to view high-res pics of the 2008 Volvo S80 T6 Turbo AWD

Volvo has given the S80 line a little more power and traction with the introduction of the T6 Turbo AWD edition. The T6 utilizes a twin-scroll turbo unit to provide the extra power, and the velvety-smooth 3.2L inline six has been down-sized to 3.0L due to a narrower cylinder bore and shorter stroke. Don't let the reduction in displacement fool you, though. The turbocharged S80 will unleash 285 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque at a very low 1500rpm, which Volvo says will result in smooth, linear power delivery. That's 50 horsepower more than the normally asipirated 3.2L inline-six and only 26 ponies short of the top-end V8 model.

All that power going to the front wheels means that the T6 needs all-wheel drive, which was previously only available with the high-end V8. Thus, you have the T6 Turbo AWD. Pricing and availability of the T6 Turbo AWD have not yet been announced, but we're betting that it will be a few thousand dollars south of the V8 model's $47,350 price tag, and availability should be soon.

Volvo's press release is available after the jump.

[Source: Volvo]

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in Arlington, Va. has just concluded testing on some 75 vehicles' head restraint systems and after performing a simulated rear-end impact of 20 MPH, only 22 of the systems received the top score of "good."

At the head of the class was Audi's A4, S4 and A6, along with the Chevy Cobalt, Ford Five Hundred (Taurus, whatever) and its Mercury counterpart, Honda's Civic, Hyundai Sonata, Jag S-Type, Kia Optima, Merc E-class, Nissan Sentra and its lesser sibling the Versa, Subaru's Impreza, Legacy and Outback, as well as Volvo's S40, S60 and S80 (no surprise).

The flunkees included the Acura TSX, BMW 5-series, Buick LaCrosse and Lucerne, Caddy CTS, DTS and STS, Chevy's Aveo, the Honda Fit and Accord, Infiniti's M35, the Jaguar X-Type, Kia Rio, Mitsubishi Galant, Pontiac's Grand Prix, plus the Toyota Avalon and Corrolla.

Considering that the IIHS estimates that the injuries sustained to the back and neck in these types of collisions costs insurance companies around $8 mbillion dollars per year, their interest in the matter is obvious. Whether or not consumers will include this in their purchasing criteria is another matter however.

[Source: IIHS]

The NHTSA says Ford, Volvo and Chrysler are recalling a total of about 300,600 vehicles.

Ford gets off relatively light and is bringing in 422 Crown Vics and Mercury Grand Marquis to replace improperly secured windshields.

Volvo, however, will install new software to fix speed controls on more than 170,000 cars. Models affected include the 1999-2000 C70 coupes and convertibles, S60, S70, S80, V70, V70XC and XC70.

And just as Chrysler is getting rid of the Pacifica, it'll be seeing 127,928 of them coming back for new fuel pumps and powertrain control module software. The affected crossovers were built from Aug. 1 to Sept. 30, 2004. DaimlerChrysler is also sending Jeep Compass owners updates to their cars' manuals. NHTSA said the books omitted a required rollover warning. We imagine the folks over at TTAC could think of a few more warnings NHTSA could have included in the Compass manual.

[Source: NHTSA via The Associated Press via Yahoo Finance]

Volvo has seen fit to finally price the S80, its flagship sedan, for the U.S. market. The S80 3.2 I6 will start at $38,705 and the S80 V8 will begin at $47,350. The 3.2 I6 model features the Scandinavian brand's new in-line six-cylinder engine that develops 235 horsepower and 236 ft-lbs. or torque and is available only in front-wheel drive, while the V8 model packs a 4.4-liter eight-cylinder producing 311 horsepower and 325 ft-lbs of torque with all-wheel drive standard. Both cars shift via a 6-speed auto with Geartronic sequential shifting.

Volvo is expecting about 45% of S80 sales to come from the U.S. and Canada, which sounds about right to us as this sedan is shaping up to be a worhty contender. It's also worthy to note that while it's true the S80 desperately needed a more robust powerplant in the form of a V8 to compete in this segment, the price of the top-end model is now nearly $8,000 more than the outgoing model that was powered by a 208-hp, turbocharged inline five-cylinder. Of course, the new, less expensive 3.2 I6 model easily outguns that old five-banger in every category for nearly the same price (MSRP of 2006 Volvo S80 2.5T AWD is $39,360). The price of the S80 V8 also comes in far below the base sticker of other import V8 luxury sedans like the Audi A6 4.2, BMW 5-Series with the 4.8-liter V8 and Lexus GS430.

Read Volvo's press release after the jump...

[Source: Volvo]

In Ford's Premier Auto Group (PAG) one manufacturer has stood alone, sustaining a high degree of prosperity in the past. However, in the last two years, Volvo has seen a decline in its new vehicle sales and judging by figures from the first half of 2006, those numbers seem to be dwindling even more.

As far as dollars and cents are concerned, PAG condenses all of its manufacturers' earnings into one lump, so the ability to parse out who is losing what is a task reserved for only the geekiest of accounting wizards. What we do know is that PAG, as a whole, had broken even last year, while the second quarter of 2006 shows a loss of $162 million. Not massive, but worrisome.

Analysts are pointing to a number of factors leading to Volvo's decline and at the forefront of those issues is an aging product line. Thankfully, Volvo is addressing this issue head-on, granting the S80 with a thoughtful redesign, as well as bringing the new C70 into the marketplace. The entrance of the C30 hatchback, which fills a niche previously untouched by the Swedish manufacturer, may give Volvo the added boost it needs, especially if it is well received here in the States in 2008.

[Source: Automotive News - sub required]