Sweet Swede Volvo

Volvos are safe. The newer Volvos are clad with so many electronic safety wizardry that Merlin himself would seem like a daft punter by comparison. ABS, EBD, ESP, EBA, BLISS (which is blind spot assist), seat belt pretensioners, airbags for every part of your body, etc. You name it they have it. You’d have to be very stupid to be able to crash one than. But even that I suspect will be resolved by Volvo in a year or two with the introduction of yet another acronym called SDA which stands for “Stupid Drivers Assistance”… It’s fool proof. And have I mentioned that there are fast too? Fast enough to give the teutonic Germans a run for their money at the very least. And in the event you crashed one at high speeds, you’d probably be able to walk away with a bruise or two and that’s about it. Hence the reason why I’d kill to own a V50.     

Having said that, the Volvos of the yesteryears are just as safe albeit the complete absence of all the electronic safety wizardry. I remember the first time I was given the keys to a Volvo about four years ago in the guise of a 940 GLE. I marveled at its sheer size, it was huge and thought of how it must stir like a barge and would require a tow boat just to park or rather dock it. I gave it a slight knock to the front fender and the driver’s door and the thud was rock solid. It was a tank!

The engine started with the finesse of Swedish cheese, all five cylinders and the interior all practical and utilitarian. I than made a slight nudge on the steering to the left with the intention of sliding to the left lane and… nothing happened; the car kept going straight like nobody’s business. My first impression was correct it really did stir like a barge. Only with greater persuasion did the Volvo finally obliged and shifted to the left. Being the barge that it is, the ride was smooth and silky, heavenly even.

I proceeded to floor the throttle whilst expecting a slight thump of the auto gearbox and I was left disappointed. Only after a long fifteen minutes debate between Mr. Throttle and Mr. Auto Gearbox did Mr. Auto Gearbox finally gave in and decided to drop a gear. And even than the Volvo did not so much as accelerated as it did wafted. The car finally reached 120 km/h a 100 kilometres later. And at 120 km/h the car told me, ‘Hey mate 120 is enough, not too fast but not slow either’, I than basically told the car, more power, more speed, the car replied in a reluctant tone, ‘suits you than. I’ll do as I’m told’. Eventually it did do 130km/h at about the same time it took a person to buy a movie ticket at TGV KLCC, queue to buy popcorn and coke, watch the entire movie, take a leak on the way out, pay the parking ticket, take an elevator down to the LG2 and start his car’s engine. Yes, that long.

After handing over the keys, I didn’t think much of the Volvo. Especially after a girl in the parking booth without even having looked at me called me a ‘Pakcik’. This led me to come to the conclusion that a Volvo 940 is an old man’s car and it was; the Volvo I drove belongs to my father-in-law. I pause a moment to make it clear that despite the generality of the statement, when read in the context of my father-in-law, ‘old’ should be understood as wise, matured and exalted.

But you know what? When I really thought about it, it made perfect sense. Without all the modern gadgetry, 120km/h is perhaps the fastest a car should ever be going. Safety being Volvo’s creed must have dictated that the rigidity of a Volvo shall be relative to the top speed of the Volvo. They decided that just like the 240 and 244 before, the 940 shall be modeled after a tank. That said, the 940’s engineers after relentless and countless calculations and crash test decided that 120km/h should be the top speed of a 940. But than a marketing guy comes into the scene and said, ‘hey this is a car with 2.4 litre engine and five cylinders, we can’t have it appearing on paper going marginally faster than a Sherman tank just because its built like one. It must go faster, otherwise how do you justify that big engine we have up front?’ Which than sparked an intense debate between the engineers and the marketing guy… tenser than the one in the Malaysian parliament. Several walk outs later and after abusive depiction of monkeys and what not, the engineers and the marketing guy finally reached a compromise, ‘OK, we agree that the top speed be increased BUT it will only accelerate to exceed 120km/h at the same distance one takes to drive from Sweden to Finland’. Agreed.

This to me makes perfect sense. Think about it? Have you ever seen a tank operator injured in a road crash? … My point exactly!

So, I now draw the correct conclusion that the newer Volvos are safe because their packed with all the modern electronic safety gadgetry known to men whilst the more historic one’s are safe because they were built like tanks and SLOW. Yes, ‘Volvo for life’.