New Volvo V90 teased with a history of Volvo’s Estate cars

The new Volvo V90 estate will debut next week, ahead of which Volvo is teasing its arrival with a history of 60 years of Volvo estates.

The new Volvo V90 estate – the load-lugging take on the new S90 – is due to be revealed on 18 February, so it would be reasonable to expect a tease or two from Volvo ahead of the event.

But the V90 has already been revealed thanks to a photo of the new V90 undisguised in Sweden (and a scale model), so Volvo is taking a different tack – a history lesson on Volvo’s estate cars.

As Volvo rightly point out, few car companies have quite the heritage Volvo has when it comes to estate cars, although Volvo estates have become more style-driven than practical over the years, and the days are long gone when every antique dealer in the land had a Volvo estate to lug around big brown furniture.

But Volvo has been building estates for 60 years, starting with the Volvo Duett in 1953 – one of the first Volvos to find its way across the Pond – and followed by the Amazon (officially the Volvo 221) in 1962, which came with 115bhp and a two-split tailgate.

Even the 1800 turned in to the 1800 ES – a shooting brake rather than a commodious estate – with the Volvo 245 Estate of 1974 really sealing Volvo’s reputation for safe load luggers.

By 1990 Volvo had delivered its last rear-wheel drive estate with the 960 (which actually got renamed to the V90 in 1996), and we even got a limited edition Volvo 850 T5-R sporty estate in 1994 with 245bhp and a 0-62mph time of 6.9 seconds (which was remarkably swift in 1994).

All that history is now about to be demonstrated with the new Volvo V90, promising to deliver the best estate car Volvo has ever built.

All will be revealed on 18 February 2016.