New-age Volvo buyers favour power over safety

The company that invented the seatbelt is now cashing-in on cashed-up hoons.

Staid Swedish car maker Volvo is once again blowing the cobwebs from its dowdy image – by releasing its fastest and most powerful model of all time, the S60 Polestar.

The twist to this turbocharged tale: customers are asking for it. Volvo says it now appeals to a new generation of buyers who favour speed over safety scores.

“Australia is a performance market,” says Volvo Car Australia managing director Matt Braid, citing the high penetration of high-powered cars.

“If you look at AMG sales versus Mercedes, M cars versus BMWs … [and]
HSV versus Holden, compare all those brands and Australia has one of the highest penetrations of sports models in the world.

“The buyer demographic for Volvo is changing. The types of buyers are different to what they were 10 years ago. This project came out of the fact that we are getting customer feedback asking for … more performance.”

So Volvo created a high powered model unique to Australia: the power upgrade, bigger wheels, performance tyres and sports exhaust are all fitted locally, yet are still covered by the maker’s three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty and service schedule.

“The Volvo brand over time in Australia has struggled [but] the acceptance of the brand is changing dramatically,” says Braid. “We sell one out of every two cars that are test driven. Statistically, we believe that is largely unheard of in Australia.”

The industry average is that one in five dealer enquiries and one in three test drives results in a sale.

When asked if the high powered car was at odds with Volvo’s safety image, Braid said: “Safety was a massive differentiator years ago [but] the safety gap has certainly closed. It’s still our leading core value and always will be … but it’s not the first item on a shopping list that must be crossed off for a car buyer these days.

“We are the safest brand, we make no bones about that, but whether you’re driving at 5km/h or 200km/h, obviously driving is driving. It covers all sorts of variables, speed, road conditions etcetera. And obviously Volvo’s mantra is to do the best possible to protect the occupants of the car and surrounding cars and pedestrians in all driving situations.

“I don’t necessarily think … the performance side is impacted by safety and vice versa in this instance.

“At the end of the day it’s a Volvo so it’s going to have all the safety equipment and heritage that every other Volvo will.”

At $82,990, the Volvo S60 Polestar is $10,000 dearer than the model on which it is based. Only 50 cars will be produced in the initial batch but the project could lead to other performance models.

“This is a toe in the water test, see that it provides the results the customers are asking for, and we can assess it and go from there.
We are quite excited this could be the start of something.”

Volvo says the first batch of 25 cars is spoken for; the second batch due in January is expected to sell quickly.

The S60 Polestar (named after a Swedish tuning and motorsport outfit) is powered by 3.0-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder engine that delivers power to all four wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission.

Standard power and torque has increased from 224kW/440Nm to 242kW/480Nm. The 0 to 100km/h time has been trimmed from 6.1 seconds to 5.8 seconds in the process.

The previous top model was the S80 V8 sold between 2006 and 2011 and with an output of 232kW/440Nm. The previous S60 R sold in 2004 had 220kW/400Nm.

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