Car reviews

Our group sometimes is asked to answer customer e-mails/letters/phone calls, usually about safety or something more technical than our call center can handle, which isn’t much, but I think they toss these our way to play “stump the chump” with us. A good one came in last week, about why our C70 is not in the “Top 10” of some listing for convertibles. An interesting, but not unusual, question.

Here is our response:

Hello Mr. S,

Cars are like wall paint colors, you either like it or don’t. Not knowing exactly what review(s) you refer to, maybe we can still offer a general opinion about how cars are reviewed and by what kind of journalists.

There are two types of car reviewers: ones that love cars and the ones that just consider it an appliance. Car lovers want to show their expertise, their car science, always aiming for whatever internal perfection they may have and/or what their publication target audience considers when they review cars. A BMW M3 is awesome to someone who wants the ultimate driving machine, but passengers take second billing. A Volvo is about caring for the people who are with you. Volvo buyers want a safe, stylish, comfortable car. Road & Track would likely see an M3 as a purist performance car; Better Homes & Gardens might find it a waste of engineering and lacking utility.

We often are not reviewed by the type of buyers who come to Volvo. Our cars are much more soft spoken, they don’t shout, “Look at me! See what I drive!” We care about the way we look, that we are Scandinavian stylish, which is a far more soft spoken design language than other brands; that we do “Form and Function” along with comfort for everyone, good performance and road handling that matches your expectations and driving style and, of course, safety. Our cars can be quick when called up but that’s not the sole reason for their existence.

Car buff magazines (Motor Trend, Road & Track, etc) tend to like performance cars, with low 0-60 mph times, high G-force factors, and low slalom course times. They are there to sell their magazines to people who believe that someday on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles they might have space to get up to 100 mph for fifteen seconds of rationalization for buying their performance car.

Probably the reason you have been buying our cars (and thanks for your years of support) is rarely mentioned in “Top 10” listings. I think the most overlooked factor is real world safety, not what NHTSA scores show or IIHS reports or even Consumer Reports reviews. Their tests are a baseline crash into one specific barrier that manufactures over the last 10 years have figured out how to ace. So today, just looking at test scores, there really isn’t an unsafe car. In fact there are moves to adjust test scores to reflect an even higher level of safety by testers. Our C70 has pop-up rollover protection bars, Boron steel body structures, an ‘A’ pillar filled with Boron steel that would help protect occupants in a roll over. There are no tests for that kind of protection. Same for other kinds of safety we put into our cars. Going back to 1967 the with introduction of our 140 series, our sedan had three roof reinforcements and wagons four, to protect occupants based on real world accident research.

The video below is one test never mentioned in other cars, especially three-door hatchbacks. Enthusiast magazines only look at how fast a VW GTI is, how quick it turns and that it’s a couple hundred dollars less than a C30, but in the end, which one would you want to take into a brick wall?

For Volvo, the most important overriding objective is protection in and around our cars. Maybe we compromise a tad with other attributes, but we seem to have found a niche audience who likes what we do and believes in our promise of safety.

We hope this helps explain your question. It’s not an uncommon request; even my mother has asked it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to get back to us/me. No problem.

Kindest regards,
Dan

Tags: C30, crash test, rear impact test, Volvo