VOLVO is becoming serious about its position as a luxury car player, as the striking V60 demonstrates. Oozing Scandinavian design, cutting-edge safety, sumptuous quality and surprisingly involving dynamics, the Swedish alternative to a BMW 3 Series seemingly has all bases covered. Worryingly for the competition, it then hits a home run with value pricing, complete with a standard specification list that is as long as a Stockholm summer. We believe Volvo has a real hit on its hands. Try before you buy anything else in the $60K chi-chi wagon/SUV/crossover segments.
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V40 wagon
Released: Feb 1997
Ended: May 2004
Family Tree: V60VOLVO says the V60 essentially takes over from the significantly smaller V50, which continues on for now, but that the newcomer is really a resumption of what the Dutch-built V40 represented size-wise. Co-developed with Mitsubishi (though the resulting Carisma version was never sold in Australia), the front-drive V40 was the company’s tilt at the Audi A4 (it was even originally badged the V4 until Volvo was forced to add the ‘0’). Released in the mid-’90s, it found popularity thanks to neat styling, affordable pricing, and a spacious interior – more so than its German sedan contemporaries – but the critics bemoaned its soft dynamics and uninvolving driving experience. Engines for Oz were all petrol, and included a rather breathless 90kW/170Nm 1.8-litre, a 100kW/190Nm 2.0-litre, and a 121kW/240Nm 2.0-litre Turbo for the T4. All employed five-speed gearboxes in manual or auto varieties.
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