Volvo’s New SUV Plays It Safe

The world doesn’t need another sport-utility vehicle, but car companies have a hard time seeing beyond the competition. And because Volvo has seen just about everyone else hit the road with a high, wide and profitable SUV, Sweden’s safe-and-sane auto maker soon will have one too.

It may be one of the last to arrive at the party, but Volvo, a unit of Ford Motor Co.’s Premier Automotive Group, doesn’t intend to go unnoticed. Playing on its reputation, Volvo will market its XC90 as the safest SUV on the road when it hits showrooms late this year.

Industry analysts say the company stands a decent chance of success even though it will be entering a market crowded with 54 models and more on the way.

SUV buyers these days tend to think of their purchases as smart ones from a safety perspective. The cachet of an SUV with Volvo-level safety components can’t hurt.

“Being safe has a lot of selling power,” said George Peterson, president of Tustin-based AutoPacific Inc. “For many, SUVs are today’s minivans and they carry people’s most important possessions--their children. They want them to be as safe as possible.”

But the effectiveness of a safety-based selling campaign--Volvo also intends to promote the XC90’s styling and luxury appointments--won’t be apparent until sales actually begin.

Meanwhile, at least one industry watcher wonders whether Volvo-ness alone will do the trick. With most people who buy SUVs already citing safety as one reason for their purchase, “I don’t know whether it is a big discriminator among the various SUV brands anymore,” said Michael Flynn, director of the University of Michigan’s Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation. Flynn also suggests that many SUV buyers are fooling themselves when they use safety as a major criterion for their choice.

Although an SUV is indeed safer for its occupants in a collision with a smaller passenger car, they are far deadlier than passenger cars in single-vehicle accidents because of their tendency to roll, he said. And in SUV- versus-SUV accidents, the combined weight and stiff frames of the two vehicles make it more likely than in a car-versus-car accident that occupants will be injured.

Still, SUVs--including truck-based models such as the Ford Excursion and car-based models such as the Lexus RX 300--accounted for more than 20% of all passenger-vehicle sales last year, and their share of the market is expected to climb for years.

So-called crossover SUVs, models that combine elements of car and truck in the same package, are expected to lead the growth. Most, like the XC90, look like traditional sport-utility vehicles but are built on passenger-car platforms and suspensions for improved handling and ride.

It is a market segment that an auto maker with growth ambitions cannot afford to ignore, analyst Peterson said.

Volvo executives agree. Plans are to expand to 200,000 vehicles a year in the U.S. by 2005 and 600,000 worldwide. “But we cannot do that without a car like this,” XC90 project director Hans Wikman said. Volvo sold 125,710 vehicles in the U.S. last year.

The target market for the XC90--the third in a new family of all-wheel drive XC (or Cross Country) vehicles from Volvo--will be buyers moving up from sporty and near-luxury cars such as the Nissan Maxima and Acura TL or moving over from other near-luxury SUVs.

“We expect 70% of our buyers to be ‘conquests’ from other brands,” said Peter Horbury, Volvo’s chief designer, who headed the XC90 design team.

The rest will be Volvo customers who have been waiting for an SUV or who left the brand for a competitor to get an SUV but would return to Volvo if it had one, said John Neu, U.S. manager for the XC90 project.

When Mercedes-Benz and BMW launched their SUV lines, they were highly successful in winning customers away from the competition. Each reported that 80% of first-year sales were to converts from other brands, Peterson said.

But in both cases, the SUVs were radically different from anything else the companies offered. Volvo’s XC90 “is more like a Volvo wagon on steroids,” said Wes Brown, an industry analyst with the Nextrend consulting firm in Thousand Oaks. Like Flynn , he believes Volvo might be aiming too high in predicting a 70% conquest rate.

Volvo began developing its sport-utility in 1998--the year before its acquisition by Ford--and intended it to be primarily a vehicle for the North American market. It was designed at Volvo’s California studio in Simi Valley.

Volvo initially expects to sell 50,000 XC90s worldwide; almost 35,000 will be allocated for the U.S., said Thomas Ahlborg, Volvo’s XC90 marketing director.

Although pricing hasn’t been set, Volvo insiders say it should start in the range of $33,000 to $37,000 to be competitive with vehicles such as the Lexus RX 300 and Mercedes-Benz ML320.

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Keeping Things Upright

On the safety front, Volvo decided to use the XC90 to showcase a number of new systems including roll stability control, which automatically applies brake pressure to the appropriate wheels to reduce lateral forces if body tilt approaches a dangerous level. Instability caused by a high center of gravity is a problem among SUVs, and Volvo attacked it by designing the XC90 on its existing V70 wagon platform. The new SUV’s ground clearance is nearly as high as a Jeep’s and its roof line is 10 inches taller than the Volvo V70 Cross Country wagon’s, but its center of gravity is only 3.5 inches higher.

Volvo safety engineer Christer Gustaffson says the XC90’s safety package also includes a safety cage frame of reinforced, high-strength steel; seat belts with sensors that tighten the belts automatically if the roll stability control is activated; and an inflatable side curtain that extends all the way back to the third-row seats and covers the side windows to help prevent a passenger’s arm from extending through the window and being crushed in a rollover.

Critics of SUVs often complain that they are dangerous to other vehicles in a crash because of their weight, height and structural stiffness.

Gustaffson said the XC90’s front end was designed with a special reinforced lower frame that sits at passenger-car height. It has special crumple zones that let it absorb and deflect the force of an impact to help protect the Volvo’s occupants. And by crumpling under impact, Gustaffson said, it helps protect occupants of the other vehicle from incursion injuries caused when the traditional SUV’s rigid steel frame pierces the car and stabs into the passenger cabin.

Production hasn’t started and the XC90 hasn’t been crash-tested by independent agencies, but project chief Wikman said Volvo is confident it will win the highest, or five-star, safety ratings in the U.S. and Europe.

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Keeping It in the Family

Volvo design chief Horbury said the challenge was to build an SUV that still looked like a Volvo, met all of Volvo’s safety requirements and wouldn’t compete with the company’s workhorse V70 and V70 Cross Country station wagons.

The exterior package captures the essential Volvo-ness of the vehicle by using the company’s signature grille and V-shaped hood. The high taillights mounted on either side of the rear window are another Volvo element borrowed from the company’s wagons.

But those taillights bend sharply forward to avoid the boxy wagon look and to shorten the roof line--making the XC90 look a bit shorter than it really is.

Inside, seating is high and chair-like to give driver and passengers a good view of the road. Each of the three seats in the second row is independently adjustable.

In one neat touch other car makers are sure to start copying soon (Ford will offer it on the 2003 Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition), Volvo engineered the second-row center seat--which includes an integrated child booster--to slide forward. That gives parents the ability to position a child in the second row closer to the front seat occupants.

The optional third-row seats are designed primarily for children and short-statured adults. All seats except the driver’s fold flat, and the back of the front passenger seat is covered by a plastic surface so it can serve as a desk when folded.

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The Nuts and Bolts

Mechanically, the XC90 builds on the V-Series wagon and S-Series sedan from which its platform was derived. Features include independent suspension, full-time all-wheel drive, wheel and tire sizes up to 18 inches in diameter and a pair of gasoline engines for the U.S. with a diesel option for Europe and Asia.

Both engines available in the U.S.-- a turbocharged five-cylinder with 210 horsepower and a 272-horsepower inline-six cylinder with dual turbochargers--are mounted transversely to save space.

“That allowed us to move the passenger compartment forward for more leg room and more cargo space,” Horbury said.

In addition to leather seating and other high-quality interior trim materials, luxury touches include an “infotainment” system that will support regular stereo, CD players, navigation systems, satellite radio and even satellite television. There’s optional air conditioning for the third-row seats and an optional night-vision system that projects infrared images of distant obstacles on a screen that pops up from the dashboard.

Wikman said the XC90 is designed to meet California’s tough ultra-low-emissions vehicle standard. The five-cylinder model should achieve combined city-highway fuel economy ratings in the range of 21 to 24 miles per gallon. Volvo hasn’t projected fuel economy numbers for the much-thirstier twin-turbo model.

The powerful six-cylinder engine is a response to those who long have argued that the company could kill itself with blandness if all it did was push safety.

“They don’t want to be just the safe car company anymore,” Peterson said. “They want people to start thinking that you don’t have to be stodgy to drive a Volvo.”