Shock and awe. Yup, that pretty much sums up the collective reactions of the assembled media when Volvo Car Malaysia unveiled the all-new XC90 to us on December 3rd 2015. But first a bit of back-peddling is needed. The Volvo brand in Malaysia spans decades, and maybe that’s the reason why the brand has always been regarded as ‘the car your father used to drive’. Of course it didn’t help their image much that over-engineered cars like the 240GL can still be seen plying our roads. Daily. Faithfully. Absolutely refusing to die…
Actually there’s an old saying that ‘old Volvos never die’, and for better or worse, that’s pretty much spot-on accurate. The brand in general though needed a massive shake-up, and that began to happen in the mid-90’s when Volvo famously said “this time we’ve kept the car but thrown away the box”, in reference to a new design language of ‘sexier’ Volvos thanks to Peter Horbury. I remember the actual car that began this revival actually, it was the C70 Coupe.
Long before that though, Volvo were already toying with the idea of ‘hotter’ cars, and thus began the onslaught of Volvos with performance figures that were unheard of in the past. Forced-induction became the in-thing and cars like the 850R and its estate sibling the T5-R, which were suddenly being seen in a whole new light. Cementing this new-found direction, the Volvo Corporation did the unthinkable; they entered the T5-R wagon into quite possibly the pinnacle of production car races, the BTCC. With some success too I might add…
It didn’t matter though, win or lose, just seeing those wagons blazing the BTCC circuits was enough to convince everyone that the days of ‘boxy and boring’ were well and truly over. Over the next decade and then some, Volvo continued the onslaught of introducing visually-arresting and performance-tuned ‘family sedans’ and estates, and while that department was doing very well globally, their ‘X’ segment was taking a bit of a beating.
But they have been in this situation before, and if there’s one carmaker out there who knows exactly how to re-emerge looking better than ever, it’s Volvo. And yes, they’ve done it again with the all-new XC90.
I’ll not beat around the bush in terms of its design and styling, as subjective a topic as it may be, I think the designers have done a remarkable job here. They’ve managed to infuse three styling elements into the look of the new XC90; sportiness, aggression and sophistication. With its ‘Thor’s Hammer’ headlights (below) and massive front grille with the familiar diagonal logo-split, the XC90 looks menacing approaching from the rear, and the number of other vehicles that move aside when they see this thing coming is astounding. I’ll admit it, in a country where the rules of which lane to drive in are usually reversed – slow lane becomes the overtaking lane, since everyone and his uncle hog the right-most lane – it’s nice to have a vehicle that parts traffic like Moses did with the sea.
Apart from its aforementioned menacing front looks, it could also be the sheer size of the XC90 that’s daunting; it’s a massive 7-seater SUV, with cargo room at the back even when the last row of jump-seats are being used, which incidentally have their own set of a/c vents. So you can pretty-much imagine how long, tall and wide this SUV has to be, just from being able to do that.
Which brings us to what lies beneath… It’s no secret that Volvo has been steadfastly developing its power-trains over the years, and the new XC90 is the technological tour-de-force of that department. The ‘T8’ engine under the hood utilises a combination of a turbo-charged 2.0L (1969cc) 4-cylinder petrol engine aided by an electric motor capable of producing 407bhp and a whopping 640Nm of torque, transferred to all the wheels via an 8-speed automatic gearbox. It’ll sprint to 100kmh from a standstill in a mere 5.9sec and hit a top speed of 230kmh. But there’s more…
The XC90 is also a proper ‘plug-in’ hybrid (below), and comes equipped with its own charging cable. It is able to propel itself along on pure electric mode for up to 40km when fully charged.
The different drive modes are easily selectable via the iPad sized touch screen (below) located dead-centre of the dashboard, and in fact operating that touch-screen is pretty much the same as using the aforementioned device.
Living with the new XC90 was not as daunting an experience as I’d expected it to be. I think the engineers and designers knew from the start that the size of the XC90 would be a major concern for some drivers, and so they’ve made it as ‘small’ as possible. What I mean is they equipped the XC90 with automated parking, as well as a slew of sensors and cameras all around it; one of them even offering a much-appreciated / needed 360-degree birds-eye view of the car. I still don’t know how this works, but I reckon magic is involved. Yes, I’m fully aware that many modern day cars already offer this feature, but in this SUV, you really need it.
Conclusion…
There’s a lot more actually, but if I were to go into every aspect and detail, I’d probably run out of data storage. I could mention the gorgeous real crystal gear-shift knob that’s under-lit and glows pleasantly at night, (below)…
…or the elongated panoramic sunroof that extends the whole length of the upper deck, or I could even talk about the seven (yes, seven) different drive modes including one that you get to manually configure to suit your particular (peculiar?) drive style, or the fact that the whole interior of the XC90 feels bespoke and looks made according to your personal preference and guidelines, but no.
I will say though that as exclusive as it feels, the new XC90 is available in eleven exterior colours, five interior colour-combinations and three types of inlays, and that the recommended retail price really is RM453,888 (on-the-road price without insurance, inclusive of 6% Goods and Services Tax). We were all collectively expecting it to cost a lot more really, because for what you get with the new XC90 T8, that’s a steal. Shock and awe? You bet, and then some. – CW.
Rear passengers get to control their own A/C… Don’t even think about pumping petrol into this!
