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Automotive Industry

Safety First

Automotive Industries, Sept, 1999 by Lindsay Brooke

But volvo's new compact S40 and V40 also offer turbo performance and aggressive pricing.

Sis for Sedan. That one's easy. And "40" designates the compact, entry-level Volvo, smaller than the V70/C70 and S80 that have given Sweden's largest automaker its svelte (well, relatively svelte) new image. The S40 is also smaller than the mid-compact S60 now under development.

Now for the V40. This one's confusing. But since this is a Volvo, and the Swedes do things differently, we'll try to understand. The V40's the station wagon version of the 40 range, but what's the "V" stand for? According to the company's veteran U.S. marketing director, Bob Austin, V is for ... versatile. Americans might think W would've been a better choice.

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The S40/V40 Volvos have been in production for three years, at the Nederland Car B.V. plant in Born, the Netherlands. Dubbed NedCar, it's a joint-venture operation between Volvo and Mitsubishi, and the S40/V40 Volvos utilize the Mitsubishi Carisma platform.

The U.S. market is getting these cars late in their product cycles; they're due for replacement in 2001, but were already in the pipeline for North America when Ford took over. Volvo is moving to just two platforms by 2003, and the 40 series cars will shift to the company's new P1X platform. The 60, 70 and 80 will migrate to a new S80 platform, coded S2X.

Why did it take Volvo so long to bring the cars to North America? It was a combination of factors, explains Richard Snijders, vice president of product planning. "Frankly, we didn't have sufficient resources," he says, "due to the S80 development and launch." He also cites plant capacity issues, the need for "U.S. chassis tuning" (softer springs and suspension bushings), and the critical cupholder retrofit (it's a cheap little thing, fitted in place of a cubby in the IP).

Ambitious Sales Target

Better late than never, however, says Hans-Olov Olsson, president and CEO of Volvo Cars North America. The new models finally give his company product in the critical "low 20s" end of the market. Starting at around $23,000 for the S40 and a grand more for the wagon, they're about $6,000 less expensive than Volvo's current value leader, the S70 sedan.

"We've needed to be in this end of the market for quite awhile," admits Austin. "We want to expand the company beyond mom, dad kids and the dog We need younger buyers. But we don't want to sell cars to everybody."

He stresses the importance of the 40-cars to Volvo's ambitious plan to nearly double its North American sales to 204,000 units by 2004. This year it's on track for a record year of about 120,000 units (MY99 sales through June were about 63,000 cars). According to Austin, Volvo is aiming for 40,000 S40/V40 sales for the full 2000 model year.

Credit Volvo's design chief Peter Horbury and his team for melding the cars' soft, smooth exterior form with signature Volvo cues, such as the fairly upright grille and V-shaped hood. The wagon is particularly attractive; it looks totally at home parked among handsome contemporaries like Audi's A4 Avant, the new BMW 3-Series Sport Wagon (see p.59) and VW's Passat wagon. And like the stylish C70 coupe and S80, the more 40 series cars Volvo puts on the street, the more it will progressively change the public's mindset that design is as much a part of the brand as safety.

The overall package efficiency and interior comfort of both models is competitive with the new breed of wagons but ifs not exceptional, as judged by a day-long drive in Washington's Cascade mountains. Front seat design and support, and footbox room, are comfy for my 6-foot 3-inch frame. Back seats an better in the sedan than the wagon, but like many small wagons the V40 has more useful cargo volume than many other compact SUVs.

The cabins on the production cars we sampled showed consistently good fit and finish -- a quality that NedCar struggled with on earlier models. Their automatic climate control systems perform with less fuss than on earlier Volvos we've driven. And the standard HVAC filtration system uses a carbon element to screen street-level particulates from the air -- increasingly a good thing in urban traffic.

WHIPS, SIPS And Turbos

Safety indeed will be a strong marketing point for the S40/V40. Both models feature the usual Volvo battery of active and passive safety systems. Like the larger Volvos, the 40 series cars feature the company's whip-protection seats (WHIPS) designed to cushion occupants in a near-end impact; pyrotechnic seat belts; SIPS, the structural side-impact protection system, and second-generation side airbags. Dubbed the SIPSII bag, it's integrated into the seat backrests. It features an upper and lower section and inflates to a larger size than the previous airbag, to protect both head and upper torso. DSA traction control is included in an optional cold-weather package.

The smaller Volvos' chassis and power-train bring no real surprises. Suspension is handled by McPherson Struts up front; in the rear is a multi-link design with coil springs, three lateral links (one is a steering link that can compensate for toe) and trailing arms. Both cars use Volvo's all-aluminum 1.9L turbo four, that shares its 83mm cylinder bore with the company's 2.4L inline-5 and 2.9L inline-6. The light-pressure turbocharger is a twin-scroll design running a maximum 8.4 psi boost. The engines employ a variable valve timing system on their exhaust camshafts, used primarily to speed catalyst light-off during cold starts. This helps the powerplant's Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) certification for 2000. Both models are available with a Renault-built 1.9L DI diesel in Europe. (See related news story, p.21.)

Automotive Industry

Safety First

Automotive Industries, Sept, 1999 by Lindsay Brooke

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