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From Swedespeed.com Events Coverage Geneva in the late winter is a wondrous time. Sure, there are the infinite number of jewelry stores and high-end chocolatiers for the completely gluttonous shopper. For the completely gluttonous auto enthusiast, however, there’s the Geneva International Auto Show.
The night before its show stand unveiling, Volvo chose to show one example to the press at the Le Manège. 5km from the Geneva city center, Le Manège was once a prominent riding school. The facility has been fully renovated with a three-level modern industrial loft style of décor that works amazingly well with the stone walls of the old building. It is both classical and stylishly modern – a fitting place to reveal Volvo’s latest sedan. As a few hundred guests packed around the presentation area, Volvo CEO Fredrik Arp, Design Director Steve Mattin and S80 Project Director Silvia Gullsdorf pulled the wraps off of the car and highlighted the details of their newest offering. Cameras flashed to get the first images of the new car – an important vehicle not only to Volvo, but also to Ford. Ford Motor Company’s VP for North America Jim Padilla and VP of Design J. Mays could both be spotted in the audience as the covers came off. After the presentation, Swedespeed caught up with Stefan Jansson, exterior designer of the new S80 for a walk-around of the new car. Jansson is not new to Volvo. Most should be quite familiar with his previous works. The now well-known orange SCC concept car was a design of Jansson’s, with its 1800 ES-inspired tail that has been closely duplicated in the design of the C30 concept. He’s also the pen behind the exterior design of the current generation XC70, a car you can see virtually anywhere on the road.
Jansson began by addressing the evolution of the car. The first S80 was a design revolution for Volvo, going from boxy to rounded and so much more. Having just completed the line of cars using this language with the new C70, Volvo did not want to revolutionize its look with the second-generation S80. Rather, it wanted to evolve it. The change in the look focused around three main themes. First, designers were charged with making the car appear slimmer, but without changing the basic size of the car. Second, Volvo wanted the look to show more speed, even while sitting still, with more drama and more edge. Finally, Gothenburg wanted the car to have more youth appeal. Starting at the front, there’s a prominence the old car didn’t have. Believe it or not, the surface areas of both the grille and badge are 50% larger than the outgoing model. The grille is also more prominently placed, with its horizontal slats raised for prominence and a moulded surface for the Volvo badge to sit on.
The trademark Volvo diagonal strip across the grille loses its black center accent line, as seen on the C30 in January. Without the accent, more weight of the slash is angled up to catch light and still provide an accent, even without the black line. The V shaped lines that come down the hood have been a strong element in the design of Volvos since the 50’s and 60’s. However, also like the C30 and XC90 before it, the front of the V breaks the plain of the front bumper. It’s a simple element, but really adds to the character of the car’s frontal design. To help the S80 lose some visual weight, Jansson essentially cut it off at the corners. All four corners of the car have been shaved, rounding the cars appearance from the top. Light clusters have also been similarily wrapped, adding to the motion of the design. With the corners shaved, and the main V on the hood more prominently wide, this created a large open surface area across the hood. That surface was broken with two character bulges that run parallel to the V, emphasizing the car’s new V8 engine by giving it a more muscular look while being functional by helping the design with improved performance in pedestrian impact studies.
At the sides, the negative slope that formerly ran the length of the doors has been eliminated. By doing that, Volvo was able to make the doors both stronger in the steel stretching process, and less prone to very hard-to-fix door dings. Add to that use of high-strength steel for both rigidity and dent resistance. The previous strip along the doors that helped prevent dents became less necessary, so this element was removed to further clean up the design. At the side windows, chrome strips have been added. These outline the new shape of the window, with a kink in the C-pillar help to emphasize the safety cage feeling of the car’s cabin. To enhance the youthful appeal of the design, Jansson emphasized the feel of muscularity, speed and dexterity in the design.
At the rear, the 1:1 height to width ratio of the taillights has been widened to more of a 1:2 ratio for the second generation. As the taillight wraps around the shaved corner, the far light actually drops out of view from most 3/4 views. LED lighting along the profile of the now-shorter taillights help to emphasize the strong Volvo shoulder lines from the rear. The white lens of the taillamp connects with the line of trim on the trunk, further tying in the lines of the design. Perhaps the S80 can be panned as being not as ground-breaking as its predecessor, but as we learned from our conversation with Jansson, it was never meant to be so. With its aggressive, yet immediately recognizable exterior and grown-up S40 style interior, the new S80 appears to be a strong answer to an extremely competitive segment. Its new 3.2-liter 6-cylinder, 4.6-liter V8 and host of other new equipment should help it make a name for itself among the 5-series, E-classes and A6s of the world. Mays and Padilla should be pleased. Is there a drawback? We found one glaring one. Volvo Cars North America representatives suggested that the S80 may not hit North America until February of 2007. That’s a long time to wait for the new model, especially considering that the old car will not be in production much longer and new S80s will hit European dealerships this summer.
At the Show On the show stand, Volvo’s emphasis was almost entirely on the S80. 3.2 and V8 models were on display, as was a second-generation S80 Executive model with full video entertainment system, much as the current model. The C30 was literally one of only a few cars in the stand that was not an S80, with a few C70s thrown in for good measure. Geneva marked the European debut of this new small Volvo concept that is very closely based on the upcoming production model. Elsewhere in the hall, a wealth of interesting new models and concepts were shown. A full gallery of the event can be found via Swedespeed’s sister publication TheCarLounge.net at the link below. More Information: TheCarLounge.net Geneva Galleries
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