The Volvo S60 Split

Volvo ditjes en Volvo datjes.


Locked
Johann
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 5319
Joined: 09.06.2006, 19:43
Type auto: Volvo 850 SC
Contact:

The Volvo S60 Split

Post by Johann »

With the introduction of the new Volvo S60 it became clear that the looks of this model suggest a very sportive car.
Soon after Volvo started the questionable Naughty Volvo campaign.
Questionable in a way that the first video's published didn't make sense or totally missed their point. The only thing the campaign did was to create confusion.
Maybe the point was to create confusion?

Soon after the Naughty Volvo campaign the confusion became even greater when word came out that Vincent Radermecker and Eric van de Poele were going to run a New S60 "silhouette" is the Belgian Touring Car Series long before the new S60 will reach the market.
Shortly before the pictures of the real S60 racer where posted on the internet some drawings were posted of a possible Volvo S60 touringcar,


But at that time it wasn't really clear that the car was to be used in a so called silhouette class so many of so called "R clientele" became all warm and fuzzy..
Did this imply that Volvo is going to re-introduce a real R? Does it mean that all those worldwide R clients, who were bluntly left out in the cold, can go shop for a new R soon?

To add even more fuel to the fire a blurry image of a not so standard new Volvo S60 appeared shortly before the introduction at the Geneva motorshow,
At that point many of the "former" P2 R owners and soon to be ex Volvo clients became even more worked up over a possible real R successor.

Imagine the deception when Volvo introduced the new S60. It turned out Volvo will offer the S60T6 AWD with a Geartronic transmission only. In the last couple of years it has become obvious that the Geartronic has had it's best time. It is a last century transmission. It is slow and has a life of it's own. In certain circumstances it doesn't even shift smooth and when handled in a sportive way it gives up and starts running behind the facts after the first three corners.
Even when Volvo wants the people to believe that they squeezed some extra life out of this gearbox it is obvious that even a 50 percent improvement over the old and know "Captain Slow" Geartronic still isn't good enough, the environmental issues not even taken in to consideration.

After the R-line Volvo successfully introduced the R-Design line on nearly of the currently available models. This even when some models didn't even have R-Line heritage. Milking a certain concept will only work for so long. Eventually the R-Design line will become meaningless because there is no more R-Line to base the idea upon. The R-Design concept is nothing more than making a much desired but hard to reach "Halo" available to the many by offering the looks but not the power at a better reachable level. With no more Halo being available this concept will soon be dead in the water. Pouring money is a confusing and basically useless campaign isn't going to help either. With the T6 power on tap the better choice would be to put the driver back in control by installing a simple manual transmission which, most likely, can be developed for far less cost compared to a useless ad campaign. Eventually the best advertisement money can buy will sell the car and create the halo while at it. Which advertisement that might be is easy, word of mouth..
Despite the negative vibes surrounding the former S60R and V70R this is what those cars did. The only thing missing was that they needed a second chance after a not so good start.
Locked