Archive for the ‘XC60’ Category

A couple of months ago, we mentioned that Volvo had paid for product placement arranged to have its products placed in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Now that the movie is prepping for a November release, Volvo has upped its marketing game by launching WhatDrivesEdward.com. The microsite highlights the Volvo/Twilight alliance and gives visitors a chance to win tickets to the film's Los Angeles premiere as well as a brand-new Volvo XC60.

And that's great. As the second film based on the absurdly popular Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer, we're sure that New Moon will do well at the box office, so if it's exposure that Volvo wants, they're on...

Last Thursday was the 50th birthday of the three-point safety harness, invented by Volvo's first safety engineer, Nils Bohlin. After we ran an item to commemorate the event, we got a nice note from the UK offering us a video clip with some Volvo safety history.

The video turns out to have wonderful historic footage of how safety testing used to be done, back in the old days. Note, for instance, the extremely apprehensive look on the face of one test driver (around 0:15 into the video).

At about the 1:35 mark, you'll find out why he looks that way: Test drivers belted themselves into Volvo 544s and actually drove them onto ramps to flip them...

The 2010 Volvo XC60 is a handsome, comfortable crossover vehicle--and a highly rated one, scoring an 8.2 in TheCarConnection.com's road test rating. And yet, even though its out-of-the-box good looks are just hitting showrooms around the U.S., Volvo's tweaking the XC60's appearance and handling with a new R-Design package to be unveiled in the fall.

Like other R-Design models from Volvo, the XC60 R-Design wears new metallic trim on its mirrors and sills, and body-color paint on its flanks where stock XC60s have a matte black finish. Eighteen-inch Cratus aluminum wheels are distinct for the XC60, and 20-inch wheels are available. In the...