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Volvo already planning road-going V8 Supercar?

After decades of cat-and-mouse battle waged between Holden and Ford, Australia's V8 Supercars series has expanded considerably. Mercedes and Nissan both joined the grid last season, and Volvo has followed suit this year. So when 2014 championship kicked off earlier this month in Adelaide, everyone was watching to see who would come out on top.
The answer is Holden, which took first place in all three of the weekend's races. In fact the General Motors division locked out the podium in the first and third races and took first and third places in the second race, letting just one other manufacturer onto the podium the entire weekend - and that was Volvo. The Polestar S60 scored second place on its first race weekend, beating all the Nissan Altimas, the Mercedes E63 AMGs, the Ford Falcons and most of the Holden Commodores.
Now that's hardly winning the championship, but it's a very solid debut. And that point was not lost on the people back at headquarters in Sweden, who are already thinking about making a roadgoing version of the race-spec V8 Supercar.

Volvo developing new three-cylinder engine family

Pop the hood on a Volvo of recent vintage and you'll find four-, five-, six- and even eight-cylinder engines. But the Swedish automaker is downsizing its engines over the coming years. The new XC90, set to be revealed later this week, will use a new family of four-cylinder engines (like the one pictured above). But that's not even the end of it as emerging reports speak of a new three-cylinder engine family in the works.
The new 1.5-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine will, according to reports, help Volvo further cut its carbon emissions in line with constricting regulations in markets like Europe and Australia. There won't be quite as many versions as the four-cylinder range, which will include gasoline and diesel versions in varying states of tune, but the three-pot motor is tipped to be employed in vehicles as large as the S60 and its stablemates. Larger than that, however, and the three-cylinder engine apparently just doesn't have the necessary torque.
Expect the new three-cylinder engine to be introduced sometime later this decade, after the four-cylinder's introduction in 2016. The three-cylinder engine is also set to form the building block of an even more efficient hybrid propulsion system in the future, enabling this new engine family to stay relevant through 2025.

Scratch that new crossover, Volvo teases ad campaign for XC60

If we were to paraphrase the opening lines of Kenneth Graeme's Wind in the Willows for our own purposes, we'd write, "Have you heard about Volvo? They never planned a new crossover at all. It was all a horrid low trick of theirs...." To be fair, though, we can't blame them for our own presumption. When the Swedish car company created a site called LeaveTheWorldBehind.com and teased a couple of videos for some kind of collaboration with Swedish House Mafia, we thought the crossover in one of the teasers pointed to a new vehicle on the way.
Turns out that's not the case. It really is 'just' a collaboration with the band on a music video for Swedish artist Lune's cover of their 2009 song, Leave the World Behind.
But there are Volvos in it, and you can watch it below and hear original song alongside. We've also included the press release with more details on why it all came together, and a behind-the-scenes video on the collabo. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "That's all we have to say about that."