Ottar’s Mound is a broad 37 metres across, a huge earthen tomb that holds the bones of a king. Or so it is said — old King Ottar might have instead shuffled off to Valhalla while fighting other heavily bearded and quite angry gentlemen in Denmark. It is a historical landmark, and part of Sweden’s ancient past.
Of course, modern Scandinavia is all fresh-faced folks in fancy sweaters, all looking like they’ve just won the Eurovision song contest. It is a place of sleek design and social conscience, of environmental sensitivity and renewable resources. It’s a wonder how they put it all together using only an Allen wrench.
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2016 Volvo XC90
Graeme Fletcher, Driving
SUV Review: 2016 Volvo XC90
But scratch the surface and there’s plenty of Swedish death metal to be found, the roots of that long lost Viking culture still running deep. So too with Volvo, the single remaining Swedish automaker. It has a history that stretches back to the beginning of the automotive age.
Their newest offering, the XC90, is as modern and new as Swedish society. However, each of its strengths has roots running all the way back to those early Volvos. Here’s a look at the links between the newest machine to wear the diagonally-slashed grille and its ancestors.
Design
Visiting any auto show tends to result in future-fatigue. The flashing lights, the thrumming bass, the hard surfaces and sharp edges; not so at the Volvo display, which looks a bit like a sauna crossed with a holodeck. It’s all woods and curves, and the cars on display aren’t bristling with artificial aggression. The interior’s even better, filled with little touches like the jewel-faceted trim on the shifter.
Read more: Weird and wonderful cars from the Volvo museum in Sweden
Volvo makes a big deal out of their Swedish design credentials — but wasn’t that more Saab’s deal? Volvo made the bricks and Saab made the aircraft-inspired stuff, right?
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2016 Volvo XC90
Graeme Fletcher, Driving
However, the XC90 looks good enough to have garnered several awards for design. The exterior manages to have the sort of reserved presence you used to get from all the luxury marques, back before everyone else started designing their cars to look like vacuum-powered cheese-graters.
Where’d that come from? Not unlike the Vikings and their tendency to snatch up anything that captured their fancy, Volvo’s design language seems to have picked up cues from other cultures. Consider perhaps the first truly beautiful Volvo, the P1800.
Styled by Italian firm Frua, the P1800 took stout Swedish internals and gave them the sort of swooping body a sports car deserved. It was then built by Jensen motors in England, adding a further pan-European flair to the car.
Interior Comfort
In his first drive of the XC90, our own Graeme Fletcher said, “the seats are to die for on a longer drive.” It’s a common refrain heard from many long-time Volvo owners.
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2016 Volvo XC90
Handout, Volvo
And I do mean long-time. Volvo’s earliest efforts in trying to come at seat design in a different way stretch back to the 1960s, when they introduced a steplessly adjustable lumbar support for the Amazon. It was a world-first, and came as the result of conferring with medical experts as to ideal positioning and ergonomics.
Safety
What’s the old Dudley Moore line from Crazy People? “Volvos: they’re boxy, but they’re good. Be safe instead of sexy.” Volvos aren’t particularly boxy any more, but they still carry a reputation for safety.
With the XC90, that extends to passive crash-protection stuff like a strengthened chassis and enough airbags to qualify as a medium-sized hovercraft. It also involves any number of systems designed to prevent an accident in the first place: “Auto Brakes at Intersection” for instance. This system looks for unexpected vehicles darting out at intersection and applies automatic braking if a collision is imminent. I’m not sure how they thought up the name for it. Total mystery.
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Volvo sent this new XC90 flying into a ditch as a demonstration of the car’s safety tech. The SUV for the most part was intact, and the dummy occupants suffered only minor injuries.
Graeme Fletcher, Driving
Volvo’s stated safety goal is that no one be killed or injured in a new Volvo product by 2020. The year approaches quickly, and there’s plenty yet to do; but if you look back at past safety innovations, there’s a reason Volvo has the reputation it does.
Also read: Here’s what happens when a Volvo XC90 is sent into a ditch
Probably the most famous example is the three-point seat belt. It was developed by inventor Nils Bohlin, who actually came over from Saab’s aircraft division, where he’d been designing ejection seats. Imagine if those had somehow found their way into the ol’ 240 DL.
The three-point safety belt has saved somewhere above a million lives over the years – but not just in Volvos. While a patent was filed in 1959, Volvo elected to release the rights, allowing other manufacturers to make their vehicles safer.
Forced Induction
The XC90’s plug-in hybrid technology is pretty interesting stuff, but it’s not all that unique in the coming market. You could, for instance, also look at getting a plug-in hybrid version of the Porsche Cayenne.
What is somewhat unexpected is the twin-charged 2.0L engine that’s expected to lug this big beast around. Just 2.0L? That’s a lot to ask from a little four-banger.
Happily, Volvo knows all about cramming boost into smallish engines to make more power. The firm’s history with turbocharging stretches all the way back to the 1950s, with strong turbodiesel engines going into Volvo’s truck division products.
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In 1974, Volvo launched the 144. When the company decided to export it to North America, the bumpers had to be changed to meet U.S. standards. The oversized bumper quickly became known as the “Liar’s Bench.” It was so called because the workers sat on it during coffee breaks. It was sitting on the bumper the workers told stories about the size of the one that got away.
Graeme Fletcher, Driving
Boosted 240s, 740s, and 850s are affectionately known as Turbobricks and are still popular with fans today; Volvo even campaigned a few boxy cars in Group A touring car racing. They’d build numerous hotted-up Volvos through the ages, all the way up the Polestar-edition machines you can find in your Volvo showroom today.
Adding supercharging to an already turbocharged engine is just another way to squeeze a little more power out of a lighter and more efficient smaller-displacement powerplant. The instant-on characteristics of supercharging nicely complement turbocharging’s more efficient power-adding, making for a healthy total of 316 horsepower.
And there’s more on the horizon, too. Volvo tested out a prototype tri-turbo engine that puts out an astonishing 450 hp. The engine incorporates an electric turbocharger to supplement the twin conventional units, and while there are no plans to put the motor into a production vehicle, you can bet future Volvos will speak softly and carry big boost.
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