“It’s time to stop counting cylinders,” said Peter Mertens, Volvo’s research and development chief, back in 2011, as he unveiled a new strategy based on a common, 2.0-litre engine block, which would power Volvo’s entire range and allow it to offer smaller, lighter cars.
Four years of banging on in a similar vein and the poor man must be sick of the sound of his own voice, but this week, as unleaded petrol prices nibbled at £1 a litre, Volvo let us out in the first fruit of this thinking, the all-new XC90.
“This is an extremely exciting moment,” said Mertens. “It is the rebirth of Volvo.”
“I’m very excited,” said Dennis Nobelius, vice president of XC90 production.
“This is really exciting,” added Magnus Holst, product spokesman.
So it's an exciting car, then…
Doesn’t look it, though. In fact, the new Volvo XC90 is visually less exciting than its predecessor. That big “waterfall” front grille, a roofline so high you could drive it wearing a stove-pipe hat, and the tall windows; there’s something of a Fifties Studebaker "woody" station wagon in there. As revolutions go, this one’s wearing slippers and sipping a mug of Horlicks.
At least the back of the XC90 is a bit more daring: heavily shouldered, with a stacked appearance similar to the last Range Rover's.
Of the three specs on offer, my favourite was the sporty-looking R-Design, with its black grille, but the base-level Momentum spec will be the most common, while the range-topping Inscription will occupy just 20 per cent of sales.