mmarshall

If it is cold when you do the test-drive, remember that tire pressures drop roughly 1 PSI for every 10 degrees of air temperature. You might want to check them with a traditional gauge, as the built-in tire-sensors on new vehicles sometimes don't read well at cold temperatures until they warm up a little. Volvos, in general, tend to ride on the firm side even with recommended PSIs. Also, cold temperatures will, of course, allow you to see how quickly ad efficiently the engine warms up and the heater works.

LexBob2

Thanks, but tomorrow the high will be around 10 with sub zero wind chill, so I don't think I want to be checking tires pressures, especially on a car that's not mine. I'll wait until it's warmer. Around here that might be in March.

mmarshall

Totally understand. Much of my mother's side of the family is from Ohio...so I know what you mean by Midwestern winters. Just be glad you're not in Minneapolis or Bismarck.

Sulu

Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks share absolutely nothing except the name and logos. They both, at one time, belonged to the same company, but since Volvo Cars was sold off to Ford in the 1990s, they have been completely separate.

Volvo Trucks remains a Swedish company, whereas Volvo Cars is not Chinese-owned.

MattyG

Volvo has been owned by Chinese manufacturer Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and its corporate Swedish arm since 2010. The Ford years lasted for about a decade and that happened to coincide with a difficult era for quite a few car makers because of the 2008 financial meltdown. Volvo ended up selling itself to survive. When Ford bought Volvo it was for $6.5B. When the Chinese bought, it was for $1.5B.

Today Volvo focuses on small displacement turbo 4s and electric because that is what the Chinese market demands in an upmarket vehicle. IMO Volvo lost its way when it went after the FWD market and abandoned its traditional RWD platform toughness. At least they're still around.

It's a familiar tale that also points to Jaguar Land Rover arrogance. Tata Motors is now the corporate owner. In fact, there are more similarities between Geely and Tata than Volvo and JLR.

Sulu

This is what I meant to say: Volvo Cars is now Chinese-owned (not Swedish-owned and not affiliated with Volvo Trucks).

S2000toIS350

My understanding is that Ford paid the strong premium for Volvo cars to get access to the highly regarded 850 FWD platform.

mmarshall

The question that was originally posed was not the ownership of Volvo, but of RWD vs. FWD platforms. I simply pointed out that, no, there were no RWD auto-based platforms....all heavy truck. And, BTW, Volvo truck and car divisions do share the same home page:

http://www.volvo.com/home.html

Sulu

Volvo Cars no longer builds RWD cars; bringing Volvo Trucks into the discussion is irrelevant because Volvo Trucks is not (no longer) related to Volvo Cars and builds heavy commercial trucks and buses, not light-duty trucks that would be more closely related to cars.

Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks together own the trademarks for the name and logo, giving each company the right to the name and logos. I assume that the Volvo.com website is owned by the joint-venture company that owns the trademarks.

Byprodrive

iTrader: (1)

I drove a new Polestar a couple hours ago! These cars are amazing, the most comfortable high performance vehicle I have ever driven. The seats are perfect & so is the suspension with it's Ohlin dampers with remote fluid reservoirs. The Polestar 2 must be the next gen electric vehicles.

BoDarville

actually i read the next gen are a 600hp hybrid but they are available via Volvo's new subscription service only (meaning you can't buy one).

forget about that, tell us about the polestar you drove: was it an s60 or v70? was it new or used? did you negotiate at all before walking away? what was the lowest asking price?