The Swedish company is continuing its onslaught of new cars for India and just three months after the launch of the XC60 SUV comes the S60 saloon. Volvo’s newest and arguably boldest design in a long while, the S60 will also be the cheapest car on offer in India by far. 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.
Pricing for the S60 is expected to start at under Rs 30 lakh, though it will most likely be for the four-cylinder models that will be launched later. What will be on offer for the interim will be the D5 diesel and T6 turbo petrol models? The D5 is the same unit found on the S80 saloon and XC60/XC90 SUVs in India and is powered by a 2.4-litre twin-turbo, straight-five diesel motor with 205 bhp@4000 rpm on offer and a massive 42 kgm@1500-3240 rpm. Performance from this car is pretty good – the standing start to 100 kph coming up in just 7.8 seconds with a top speed of 230 kph 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. Expect it to be the largest selling S60 engine model for the time being.
Coming to the other engine on option, petrol heads will get T6 twin-turbo petrol with a stonking 304 bhp@5600 rpm and a fruity 44.6 kgm from just 2100 rpm. Being the only turbo petrol six-cylinder offering in its segment, expect the T6 to leave the competition in its wake. Standing start numbers of 6.5 seconds to 100 kph and a top speed of 250 kph should make its job easy of keeping cars like the BMW 330i and the A4 3.2 V6 in its sights. Both engine models can be expected to be offered with all-wheel drive as well as a six-speed automatic gearbox as standard. 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 its dealer line up f they ever hope to do enough justice to the sales potential of its car line up. So, it is over to March 10th then!
More pictures of 2011 Volvo S60 –
