THE BODYGUARD
Volvo is a safety pioneer, but now it offers added security for the rich and famous with its range of armoured SUVs
WEEK in, week out, our reviews team endeavours to bring you the most comprehensive assessments of the latest cars and model variants. However, one factor our reviews don’t tend to consider is how well a car protects its occupants from an assailant armed with an assault rifle and hand grenades.
For the small number of buyers around the world who need to take these considerations into account, though, the Volvo XC90 Armoured would score very well indeed.
Arguably Volvo is most famous for making safe cars, and the XC90 is certainly no exception. In fact, figures released last year suggest that no fatalities have ever been recorded in an XC90 in the UK, while the US-based International Driving Authority describes the Swedish SUV as the safest car in the world.
It’s perhaps for this reason that Volvo has been approached multiple times over the years by businesses wanting to work with the Swedish firm to produce armoured cars. Two years ago it eventually agreed to the requests, and decided to enter the armoured vehicle market.
Now we’ve finally been able to see exactly what Volvo has been working on. In conjunction with German armoured car specialists Trasco Bremen, the manufacturer has built a protected XC90, known as the XC90 Armoured, as well as a light-armoured version of the XC90 and smaller XC60. We visited the Volvo Studio in Stockholm, Sweden, to get the inside story on both the light and heavy-armoured versions of the XC90.
Heavy
The XC90 Armoured was designed with one brief in mind – protection. For that reason, the car has been built to meet VR8 (vehicle resistance level eight) certification, which requires it to be able to preserve the lives of all occupants against attacks from a variety of weapons.
To that end, the XC90 Armoured can resist being shot at with a 7.62x51mm armour-piercing NATO-standard ammunition round, for example. The car can also withstand two DM51 hand grenades – standard issue for the German military – being set off underneath it, as well as resisting the blast from a 12.5kg roadside bomb detonating four metres away.
As Stephan Green, director of commercial management at Volvo, told us: “You wouldn’t feel super after that blast, but you would survive, and that is what this certification is about.”
In order to achieve this level of protection, Volvo and Trasco created what the car’s engineers refer to as an ‘armoured cage’ around the cabin. This comprises 10mm-thick high-strength steel plating, and windows made from 5mm-thick bulletproof glass.
Speaking of the windows, the only one that actually opens is the driver’s, which can lower by just a few inches in order for a security pass to be held against a scanner or handed to a guard.
The vehicle’s extra metalwork weighs a colossal 1,400kg, contributing to the XC90 Armoured’s total weight of 4.49 tonnes: this also takes into account five occupants and various other security systems. You won’t notice the extra mass just by looking at the car, but you can certainly tell it as soon as you climb aboard; the weight the extra protection adds to the doors is staggering. Green explained that Volvo tries not to diminish a car’s driving dynamics when it adds armour to it, but the XC90 wasn’t designed with armour in mind, so the extra weight inevitably takes its toll.
“There has to be a compromise,” he said. “We have to develop a chassis to cope with the weight, including brakes and suspension, so we have an armoured car that performs well in the situations armoured cars are meant to.”
As if the armour, bulletproof glass and adjustments to the chassis and brakes weren’t enough, the XC90 Armoured
“You wouldn’t feel super after that blast, but you would survive, and that is what this certification is about.”
STEPHAN GREEN Volvo