2011 Volvo S60 T6 AWD

2011 Volvo S60 T6 AWD 2011 Volvo S60 T6 AWD
First Drive Review

As hard as it may be to believe, there have been sporty Volvos in the past. The Swedish brand, now under the stewardship of Chinese carmaker Geely, won its share of rallies on the backs of cars like the PV, and the 850T-5R was stunningly quick in its goings and haltings. But those cars were aberrations, rare instances when the Nordic penchant for drinking lighter fluid exerted itself on the product-planning process.

Now, however, Volvo is dead sober about running amid Autobahn-bred competition with its 60-series vehicles, a designation the brand hopes to make synonymous with athletic driving behavior. We had inklings of this when the powerful, fluid-handling XC60 impressed us in a comparison test last summer, and the S60 continues in that vein. Makes sense: When every other carmaker is touting its safety bona fides and honing in on Volvo’s self-declared turf, the Swedes need to dig a little deeper and find something new.

“Create the Sportiest Volvo Ever”

That was the engineering brief. But because Volvo knows that many of this volume model’s customers might not autocross their S60s on the weekends, it offers three chassis tunes: dynamic, touring, and Four-C. All begin with the strut-front, multilink-rear Y70 platform that underpins the XC60 and S80, as well as the previous generation of Volvo’s mid-size sedan and wagon. The dynamic chassis, shod with 18-inch wheels, will be standard for the U.S. market. It boasts springs that are almost 35 percent stiffer, stouter bushings, and harder suspension mounts versus the S80. A new steering column uses thicker tubing relative to its platformmates, and the whole path from the steering wheel to the rack roughly doubles in stiffness.

The gentler touring setting is a no-cost option in the U.S. It is a tweak to the dynamic setting, with more relaxed damper valving and softer front and rear subframe bushings. For $750, you can get the third option, called Four-C (“continuously controlled chassis concept”). In it, adaptive dampers deliver three driver-selectable modes: comfort (analogous to touring), sport (dynamic’s equivalent), and advanced, for the flattest, stiffest response.

At launch there will be four engine options worldwide, ranging from a hobbit-ready 161-hp diesel four to the turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six from the XC60, here putting out a very competitive 300 hp and 325 lb-ft of torque. We will get S60s with just this engine initially, but expect a version of Volvo’s 2.5-liter inline-five within a year. The six, designated T6, hooks up to a six-speed automatic with manual shift control but no shift paddles. It feeds power through a Haldex all-wheel-drive system, which defaults to 95/5 front-to-rear torque distribution but can send all its power to the rear in cases of extreme loss of front grip. The S60 uses its traction-control sensors and braking system to act as torque-vectoring hardware, clamping the inside wheels during hard cornering to help the outside wheels put more churn down. Unlike more sophisticated mechanical systems such as the one in the BMW X6, this so-called corner traction control only works under acceleration, but its goal is the same: Negate understeer and help carve a tighter line through a turn.

Safety Second?

Don’t worry: Volvo’s protective impulses still fire away underneath, and safety systems abound. The big news for the 2011 S60 is the so-called pedestrian detection with full auto brake. It uses front-mounted cameras to pick out a person crossing in front of the car and will slam on the brakes if the driver doesn’t heed its warning. It’s a novel concept, especially considering that about 10 percent of U.S. traffic fatalities involve a pedestrian, but the system hit us with a false positive. You can get it as part of the $2100 Technology package that also includes collision warning, adaptive cruise control with queue assist, distance alert, driver alert control, and lane departure warning. We’d opt to skip all that and stick with the standard safety suite: “City Safety”—which mitigates low-speed collisions—plus inflatable side curtains, stability control, side-impact protection, and whiplash-protective seats.

Better Than IKEA

It all comes wrapped in an undeniably handsome exterior, with a Swedish take on the “four-door coupe” envelope that has become so popular with European (and therefore Korean) carmakers. There’s a welcome sense of Scandinavian simplicity and integration in the bodywork, as the shapes flow into one another. The C-pillars bend down to incorporate the taillamps; angled LEDs flank the grilles; and cursive shoulder lines connect the whole car and anchor its stance.

The new S60 is about an inch longer than the outgoing one—the track also is one inch wider in front and nearly two in the rear—but its wheelbase gets a 2.3-inch stretch, which translates into a little more rear-seat room.

According to Volvo, curb weight rings in at about 3900 pounds. That’s a lot of lard relative to the rest of the segment, but the S60’s 300-hp engine provides a pounds-per-horsepower ratio of 13.0 that absolutely demolishes the 211-hp Audi A4 2.0T. Both are trounced by the 328-hp Infiniti G37, though.

Inside, the surprises are a welcome few. The waterfall center console and the two round main gauges will be familiar to those who’ve been in Volvos of recent vintage. But the quality of the materials is better than before. Thick, pebbled leather is everywhere, and the seats are comfortable and supportive. And here’s something we won’t miss: the convoluted navigation system operated alternately by a remote control or buttons on the back of the wheel. Both are gone, and the seven-inch central screen (standard with or without navigation) is simply controlled by two round dials on the center console or redundant controls on the steering wheel. These novel round things also grant access to the car’s driver-selectable steering weights, in low, medium, and high effort.

Guess What? It’s Kinda Sporty

Speaking of steering, all three weights are linear and accurate. There is little distinction between high and medium efforts, and the low setting didn’t quite jibe with the heft of the body, but all modes returned direct responses from even tiny inputs. Although the steering is not brimming with feedback, the car goes around corners cleanly, helped immensely by the corner traction control system that refuses to let the front end wash out. The ride is stable and composed, but wheel impacts can be a bit jarring. We drove a dynamic-chassis car, and its transient behavior wasn’t best in class—the S60 didn’t rebound out of turns with the same finely calibrated sense of speed and control of the BMW 3-series or Audi A4. But it sure beats that of the old S60.

As does the engine. Full torque comes on at a low 2100 rpm, and the inline-six pulls smoothly and sonorously to 5000 revs. It’s a useful power band, but it never felt like it was making the same 300 hp as classmates such as the Lexus IS350 and BMW 335i. Blame for this lies with the transmission. Although reprogrammed from its prior applications in the Y70 line, it is still power sapping and clunky at step-off. The shifts aren’t harsh, but they are a bit hesitant in some on-and-off-throttle applications. Volvo has a dual-clutch transmission it uses in its European diesels, but it says that gearbox would be too coarse for this kind of car. Although probably true, that statement reveals something important about the 2011 S60: It’s arguably the most fluid and poised Volvo of all time, but it is not the sportiest. In its fine balance of comfort and sport, the bias is slightly toward the former.

When? And How Much?

The 2011 S60 goes on sale this September with a base price of $38,550, including all maintenance, service, and wear and tear for five years or 60,000 miles. Option packages are the $1500 Premium package with a power sunroof, power front-passenger seat, and xenon lights; the $800 Climate package with heated front seats, rain-sensing wipers, and heated windshield washers; the $2700 Multimedia package with Dolby Pro Logic II and the distortion-canceling MultEQ system, navigation, and a rear camera; and the $2100 Technology package as noted above. There are stand-alone options galore, but we’ve already covered the most significant one, the Four-C chassis. Figure a well-equipped S60 will ring in somewhere in the low-$40,000 range, which is a lot for a Volvo but several grand less than a comparably kitted-out BMW 335i xDrive.

The company wants to sell 90,000 of these sedans a year, with volumes split evenly among America, Europe, and Asia. That means Volvo will have to essentially double its mid-size-car volumes from last year. The S60 looks good enough to sell that strongly—and just wait for the S60 wagon in 2012—and it finally drives well enough to appeal to that segment of European-car buyers for whom “pretty sporty” is just perfect.