Swede little mystery
Spacious, stylish, oh so clever. If only Volvo’s gizmo-packed S90 drove more like a... Volvo
Volvo S90 D5 Inscription
Went to the rugby last weekend. Rugby league, that is, for the first time in decades. It was Warrington Wolves at home to Castleford, a family affair with my wife, our two boys, my daughter and her hubby. And what a game. At 10-10 with two minutes to go, Castleford stuck a cheeky drop-kick over to go one up before Wolves scored an audacious try on the right wing right just before the final hooter. My lads and I went crazy, my wife went crazy, my daughter and son-in-law went crazy and Simon, our host and owner of Wolves, went whatever the opposite of apoplectic is. Which is what the Castleford fans were.
It really was a fabulous couple of hours. I’d forgotten just how good rugby league is – like basketball, it’s non-stop action end to end with possession mandatorily changing hands every six tackles. Excellent stuff, and yet another sport that compounds my confoundment with regards to the popularity of football.
Did you see any of the football in the Olympics? It was so dull in comparison to everything else that was going on. Where golf and tennis sparkled under the spotlight of potential gold medals up for grabs, football was like the embarrassing uncle at your best mate’s 21st.
But just look how football continues to spiral out of control. In 1989, the then chairman was said to be considering selling the whole of Man Utd for about £10m. Fast forward to today and the Reds have just forked out €110m for a single player (Paul Pogba from Juventus). It’s the kind of exponential growth that beggars belief. Moneybags United, however, do still have half an eye out for a bargain, as their other big signing was Zlatan Ibrahimovic – for precisely nothing. On what is referred to as a ‘free’, in Zlat’s case from Paris St Germain. So he’s free, he played in Paris, he sounds like he’s from Eastern Europe but is in fact from Sweden.
A real Scandinavian mixed bag, as is this week’s test car.
On paper, the Volvo S90 sounds great, highlighting such delights as all-wheel drive, an economical twolitre, four-cylinder engine which, with almost double the torque of its 235hp power output, means performance should begin to enter the punchy zone, plus the fact that it is unashamedly proud of its semi-autonomous capabilities when it comes to driving itself.
But we don’t drive on paper, we drive on actual tarmac, whereupon this car becomes oh-so ordinary.
Besides, what exactly does semiautonomous mean? Either a car drives itself or it doesn’t. I don’t give a monkey’s about the combination of adaptive cruise control with pilot-assist and a bit of help from several cameras and a few satellite eyes in the sky to help regulate my speed and direction. Either I can lie back, close my eyes and get woken up at my destination of choice, or I can’t. There’s no in between. Like taking the stabilisers off your child’s bike but still holding on to the saddle hoping they won’t notice. There’s no point. Everyone just ends up living an embarrassing lie. You can’t be a bit pregnant.
Then there’s the non-essential guff, more gilding of the lily. Hey, everyone, look, ‘with Apple CarPlay you can enjoy the functions and apps you’re familiar with from your iPad via the centre display of your new Volvo’.
But what about crashing due to not paying attention, I immediately asked myself. Fear not, friends, as your S90 will read your messages to you out loud before inviting you to reply likewise. Oh goody. Yet more reasons not to live in the moment and think about what everyone else is up to instead.
The S90 also has the world’s first ‘large animal detector’. Honestly. That’s exactly what it says in the bumf. Surely, if we can’t see a large animal in front of us WHEN WE’RE DRIVING! we really shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a pedal car, let alone anything with actual pistons, fuel and a battery.
Such leaps in car technology claim to make it easier for the driver to focus on the road, yet in the old days we did that automatically because we knew if we didn’t we might die – or worse still, kill some other poor soul. Nonsense. It’s all nonsense, and we’re all falling for it, all the time.
But back to the aspirations of Volvo and this most confusing of vehicles. The elephant in the garage is the engine. Most posh taxi/chauffeur companies employ Mercedes, Audi or BMWs because they have a natural smoothness due to their V6 or straight sixcylinder configurations. Four cylinders will always be harsher and louder. Especially when the S90’s laminated windows are so good at keeping the exterior sound out, all they end up doing is channelling the Mr Whippy-style
THE ELEPHANT IN THE GARAGE IS THE ENGINE
clack-clack back into the cabin.
I liked: the huge boot, the attractive front-end styling with its Audi-ish lights and Maserati-ish grille, the lovely leather trim and even the ‘genuine Nordic Timber dash finish’. It reminded me of the Rolls-Royce Dawn, of all things.
That said, my friends and family were 50/50 as to whether it was a hit or not, as they were with regard to the white two-tone-finish steering wheel. Probably the best bit did in fact turn out to be the Apple CarPlay system. Especially compared to the audio system upgrade. Ours had both, the latter of which was either woefully underwhelming or not working properly.
Intuitive technology, intelligent technology. Interactive technology. Blah, blah, blah.
The S90 has it all, but for me only as a sideshow to distract us from the basic truth: this ‘executive saloon’ is a wannabe limo in a goddabe world. All in all, such an un-Volvo Volvo.