A few accolades, true - the Italian press in particular - but most as you know are somewhere between puzzled and bemused. We've seen it before, in it's big brother, the S80. So nothing groundbreaking about the S60's style, unless scaling down a bigger car is groundbreaking.

Hey some people like it. Some don't. If they were going to redesign, I'd like to have seen something with original inspiration...and a little bit of lineage.

RWD doesn't mean luxury...it means performance, as in handling. And there's a trend back this way: most recently, Nissan 360Z and the soon to arrive RX-8. Of course the US has it's own RWD purebred in the Mustang. I'd love to see (and own) a Volvo RWD niche car of this type.

As to the near luxury thing, a recent press release out of Dearborn announced a strategy of a Mazda-6 based S60 with the Volvo being the luxury trim level. (I thought that would have been Jaguar.) If this actually comes to pass, it will be another large brand shift: a Dearborn-directed car on a Japanese platform with a few Volvo appointments, drivetrain and logo. By then, I'll be driving...a Mustang! Or my project 745T with a T5 bolted to the M46 transmission, and custom HID lighting.
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(98 S70 T5SE misc mods, mostly lighting) (92 940GLE)