Rapid rollout of Volvo product for 2010

The next few months will be busy ones for Volvo Australia. A number of models will be refreshed with new variants and revised powertrains -- and the new product is set to start arriving from around August.

The importer's Public Affairs Manager, Laurissa Mirabelli, outlined the gamut of upgrades and improvements due here in the second half of this year.

"The UK's going with front-wheel drive on the XC60," she told the Carsales Network earlier today. "We won't do that here. We'll stick with the all-wheel drive formula. We do have a new diesel [engine] coming for XC60, XC70 and S80.

"The whole S80 range gets a facelift. It's more just making sure that the interior is completely redone and more luxurious. The S80 D5 will become all-wheel drive.

"We'll also introduce the C30 DRIVe and there'll be a number of running model changes across the various ranges that we're still now just in the process of finalising different spec and pricing."

It's for that reason -- the unsettled spec and pricing for the 2010 models -- that Volvo has kept quiet to date about what will be significant improvements to some of its highest profile models. The five-cylinder diesel, with its sequential turbocharging, is probably the biggest news.

"The diesel in the XC60, XC70 and S80 will come out around August/September," says Mirabelli.

"Once that engine is approved for hot-weather climates -- we have to get the hot-weather specs -- we're expecting they'll land in August/early September. They'll all come at once and even with the other vehicles that have got the running changes for model year 10, they'll also arrive late August/early September.

"There may only be a handful of cars like, for example, the C30 DRIVe, which will be slightly pushed back."

As far as the hot-weather D5 engine is concerned, Australia will be among the first of such markets to take the new powerplant. Volvo tells us that the new engine has been thoroughly revised, with only the core block remaining from the current engine -- and even that has been modified.

Now Euro 5-compliant, the new powerplant will develop 150kW of power and 420Nm of torque -- a substantial increase over the current engine's 136kW and 400Nm. NVH for the new powerplant has been improved through a series of changes, one of which relates to injection timing. Multiple pulses will reduce engine knock, for example.

"Globally, they've pretty much stopped production of the old engine now and so pretty much everybody gets this new engine," says Mirabelli. "This is the new engine everyone wants, and particularly for Australia, which is such a heavy diesel market, or more weighted that way -- whether it or not it continues, who knows?"

Mirabelli is still awaiting the official ex-factory specifications for the hot-weather engine and suggests that fuel consumption might be higher in our market, but power and torque figures should be the same. According to Volvo's UK office, the new engine emits fewer CO2 emissions -- down to 183g/km -- but a hot-weather version of the engine may not be quite as efficient in that respect. The same source suggests that the AWD XC60 with the upgraded engine enjoys a performance boost amounting to an 11 per cent increase.

"The current engine has twin-scroll technology, the new engine is actually a twin-turbo [sequentially turbocharged engine]," Mirabelli adds. "The engine block has actually had quite a lot of significant changes, as has the fuel system, as has the turbo system."

If introducing a substantially upgraded diesel powerplant to the XC60 range so soon after the car's local launch seems like an excellent way of deterring buyers from taking the current stock off your hands, Volvo has that covered. Mirabelli tells us that there are only about 40 or 50 units of the current XC60 D5 (see our review here) left in stock and Volvo doesn't anticipate any problems offloading those before the new engine arrives. In fact, stock of the XC60 generally is short on the ground.

"At the moment, there are 40 or 50 in the country, but by the end of tonight... most of those will be sold. We're running low on everything and we have to wait for these model year 10 cars to come through now. T6 isn't as much of an issue. There's more of those on the boat; they're coming through, but the D5, we probably will have a bit of a tie-over between July/August until the cars arrive.

"Customers who have come in wanting factory orders have been told there's a new engine and most of them have put their orders in already. So they've driven the current model and they're happy with it, so they've put their money down for the next one."

As already mentioned, this new engine with its additional output, will also be wheeled out in the S80 -- and the prestige sedan will migrate from front- to all-wheel drive. Is this move just to contain the added torque of the new engine, we asked Mirabelli?

"There is that, but also I think in this market, the S80 is an all-wheel drive vehicle -- and I think that to be competitive in that segment, it needs to be all-wheel drive across the range. We're trying to make that car as competitive as possible in what is a very competitive segment."

So the short answer is that the all-wheel drive running gear across the S80 range is a unique selling proposition that its competitors can't match.

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