Most car companies strive to create the fastest cars or the most luxurious cars or the most insanely expensive cars or more pertinently the most fuel-efficient cars, but there are few striving to make the safest cars.
Volvo has always led the safety pack and a few decades ago when consumers started expressing concerns about passenger safety, a few other vehicle manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and started developing more safety features.
So it stands to reason that Volvo would make lofty promises with regard to safety and it should come as no surprise that this optimistic Swedish company’s safety vision is that “no person should be injured or killed in a Volvo by 2020”.
Of course, in a country as violent as South Africa and given our gross propensity for road rage, that vision might not extend to us, but it’s as good a goal as any to work towards.
It was at the launch of what Volvo terms the “safest Volvo ever” — the XC60 — that Volvo managing director Braam van der Reep admitted that his brand had “slowly faded away” in South Africa.
“The challenge now lies in highlighting our technology and marketing it. We see the XC60 as our positive turnaround point — the car that will play the breakthrough role in attracting buyers from other segments,” said Van Der Reep.
Van der Reep candidly admitted that Volvo had taken quite a beating internationally and that Ford was definitely going to sell the brand because “they have a tremendous need for cash”.
“My only concern is that they might sells us at too low a price,” he said.
The XC60 is another cross-over SUV meant to compete with Beemer’s X5, Merc’s M-Class, Land Rover’s Freelander — though it’s nowhere near as big as the German heavyweights — and other similar executive crossovers, but what distinguishes this car from the pack are the safety features.
To a large extent the new safety technology comes in the form of expensive optional extras, but there is one safety feature that is standard across the XC60 range — City Safety.
City Safety is a system that uses a laser beam at the top of the windscreen to determine the distance between the XC60 and vehicles in front of the car when it is in motion at speeds under 30kph.
If the car is approaching another vehicle and the driver forgets to brake, City Safety engages the brakes to stop the car and will hopefully prevent a fender-bender.
Volvo said the next generation of this feature will be fine-tuned to detect people and theoretically the car will stop for pedestrians too. We tested City Safety using an inflatable car and the system did exactly what it promises.
According to Volvo, research shows that a significant percentage of accidents happen in parking lots and City Safety was designed to help prevent these accidents or decrease the damage incurred. If you drive an XC60 in some European and North American countries, you will get an insurance discount and though Volvo is planning to negotiate a similar deal in South Africa, it didn’t supply specifics on when this would happen.
Other notable optional safety features are the blind-spot information system, which uses cameras on the side mirrors to detect when cars are on either side of the XC60. There are two small indicator lights on the inside of the A-pillars, which light up when vehicles fall into the camera range.
There’s also the lane departure warning with driver alert, which detects when the vehicle is drifting across lanes and will activate an audible warning.
Of course, there are the usual safety features such as six air bags, ABS, hill-descent control as well as a host of other optional safety features.
Other than being an exceptionally safe vehicle, the XC60 drives like a dream and is as pleasing to the eye as Javier Bardem, which is to say it’s a handsome, yet rugged car.
The XC60 displays superb handling on-road and although I didn’t put its off-road ability through any real test, it has all-wheel drive with a ground clearance that’s higher than the Freelander so it should cope with a decent level of bundu-bashing — not that something as pretty as this will ever have to work hard to earn its keep.
There’s one petrol engine (a 3,0-litre pushing out 210kW and 400Nm) and one diesel engine (a 2,4-litre turbodiesel that develops 136kW and 400Nm) on offer that range from R469 500 to R515 000 with either six-speed geartronic or manual transmissions.