Volvo S60′S India Launch On March 10th 2011
Volvos are as safe as say the Reserve Bank’s vaults but calling them fun to drive might earn you a bullet right though your skull. Alright, all ghastly things apart, here’s a Volvo that could actually be called both safe and fun to drive in a single sentence, the 2011 Volvo S60. But why, you may ask. Here’s why.
First of all, the 2011 Volvo S60 looks way more better than any Volvo we’ve seen in India thus far. Even though the car cannot hold a candle to say a BMW 3 Series, the mildly under stated styling will do just fine for the middle aged crowd.
This apart, the car will still come with the traditional safe-as-a-vault features that all Volvos come endowed with and this includes a bevy of gadgetry to make a NASA space shuttle proud. You get City Safety as a standard piece of kit, pedestrian detection with auto-brakes, a blind lane information system, lane departure control, adaptive cruise control and camera around corners.
And if you still manage to crash into someone or something,there’s a fat chance you’ll live on to do it again. Jokes apart, the Volvo has a nice line up of engines, which when kept on the boil should be able to give all that safety gadgetry a good workout.
To begin with and what we assume will be Volvos biggest seller is the five pot, twin turbo D5 CRDI Engine, which also powers bigger Volvos like the XC60 and the S90. While the inline D5 is kind of wheezy on the XC60 with the siz speed slush box being the biggest let down, the 205 Bhp-420 Nm engine should do just fine on the lighter S60.
Volvo says that this engine is good enough for the S60 to hit hundred in under 8 seconds and go on to split the wind at a heady 230 kph. We have no reason to disbelieve that considering the torque wave on tap.
Coming to the other engine on option, petrol heads will get a T6 Twin Turbo petrol engine putting out plenty of power and torque. How about 304 bhp of shove and 446 Nm of twist? Should be plenty enough to put you ahead of most if not all Indian cars as this engine option will propel the S60 Sedan to 250 kph and while you’re at it, you can breeze past 100 in six and a half seconds.
Volvo have a handful of dealers in India and that’s why the Swedes have been struggling to sell enough when compared to German brands like BMW, Mercedes Benz and Audi, although their cars do a mighty fine job of being good, no-nonsense drives.
We’re hoping that they price the Volvo S60 well within the range of the BMW 3 Series and the Audi A4s of the world. We’re hearing a price that will be a shade under INR 30 Lakhs and that should be a fair asking price for outstanding safety, good performance as well as solid build quality.
Volvo India has always managed to price their cars right, and we hope that this carries onto the S60 as well. In the meantime, Volvo India should show some urgency in expanding it’s dealer line up f they ever hope to do enough justice to the sales potential of it’s car line up. So, it is over to March 10th then!
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