It's starting to look as if the baby Volvo Crossover - the XC30 - is getting close
Volvo have said they are planning a new Crossover soon, which seems certain to be the long expected Volvo XC30.
The rumour mill has been working on a smaller crossover/SUV from Volvo for a long time – since just about the time that the Volvo C30 first hit the road. And it’s a car that makes a lot of sense, especially in the current market. So it’s not any sort of surprise to see the rumour resurface, but we’re a bit peeved to have missed (until now) the comment that’s being attributed to Lex Kerssemakers – Volvo’s Overseas Corporate Strategy President – from Geneva when he apparently said “There will be some further expansion of the XC range in the near future”.
There is, in the current climate, zero chance that Volvo are planning on anything extreme, so the final birth of the Volvo XC30 is not just the best guest but the most logical conclusion. Apart from anything else it’s an expanding market, with premium players either making sales already – the BMW X1 – or planning new models to do so – Audi Q3. And Kerssemakers did go on to say “Naturally you would go down at this moment because we’re rather well filled with XC60, XC70 and XC90“. So it seems a done deal.
It doesn’t take too much imagination to see a Volvo C30 with a jacked up suspension and a dose of XC looks grafted on. There’s no need to conceive anything fancy in terms of options or engines, just carry over the current range of engines from the C30 and it’s job done. You could even throw in a Volvo XC30 BEV straight off the back of the C30 BEV.
We’d expect to see the Volvo XC30 hit the roads in 2012. Which would give Volvo the chance to feature it first in the next in the Twilight films so beloved of Volvo placements. So as soon as you hear that The Twilight Saga:Eclipse has started filming you can be pretty sure there’ll be a new Volvo lurking somewhere.
And our money is on the Volvo XC30.
R S Patterson says
FWIW … VOLVO XC30 Sighting in Houston, Texas, on April 1, 2010.
This is not an April Fool’s Joke. Today at lunch in the Memorial Park area of Houston, TX, I discovered a beautiful, sporty looking Black Volvo XC30 parked next to me. Checked with local dealer dealer, and all they claim to know is what they are reading online in articles like yours — only thing they could imagine was someone was testing a prototype (except the car I saw looked like a full-production unit). This is a fantastic model that stands about 5’8″ tall, Volvo black with black leather with silver trimmed interior. Only thing I did not care for was the huge sloping passenger dash. Picture a mini 4/5- passenger XC90 with all the storage space removed behind the rear passenger seat.
CarsUK says
You should have grabbed a photo on your cell!