2011 Volvo C70 on 2040-cars

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This is Volvo's awesome S60 V8 Supercar entry [w/video]

Australian auto news has been dire for the last several months with all three automakers that build there announcing they would stop production within the next three years. But Volvo is providing a shot of excitement with the unveiling of its new S60 racecar for the upcoming season of the Australian V8 Supercar series.
The Volvo S60 racecar will use a 5.0-liter, naturally aspirated V8 based on Volvo's B8444S production engine that will be tuned to produce roughly 650 horsepower on E85 ethanol. Power will get to the ground via a six-speed sequential transmission, and it will be able to reach 62 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 185. All cars in the series use common parts for the chassis, transaxle, and rear suspension.
Volvo's Polestar performance arm will campaign two of the S60 racers this season. While Volvo might seem like an odd inclusion into Australian racing, it actually has quite a successful history. It won the 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship in a 240 and won the Bathhurst 1000 race in 1998 in an S40. Polestar is not new to racing either, having been racing Volvos around the world since 1996.

When Android Automotive goes in the dash, Google wins — and automakers lose data

You've gotta hand it to Google for the way the Silicon Valley tech giant has made indelible inroads into the car on multiple fronts. The most obvious is with its pioneering self-driving car technology that's caused car companies to get their act together on autonomous vehicles — and also collaborate with Google. Google has more directly extended its influence and data-mining capabilities into the car with its Android Auto smartphone-projection platform that most major automakers have adopted along with Apple's CarPlay. And now it's preparing to dig even deeper into dashboards by deploying its open-source operating system, Android Automotive, beginning with Audi and Volvo. Volvo recently announced that its next-generation Sensus infotainment system will run Android Automotive as an OS and include Google's Play Store for cloud-based content, Maps for navigation and Google Assistant for voice recognition, which can even command a car's climate control. By embedding Google in the dash, Volvo says owners will get an improved connected experience. "Bringing Google services into Volvo cars will accelerate innovation in connectivity and boost our development in applications and connected services," Volvo senior vice president of R&D Henrik Green said in a statement. "Soon, Volvo drivers will have direct access to thousands of in-car apps that make daily life easier and the connected in-car experience more enjoyable." Having Android Automotive onboard could benefit drivers — and provide a big win for Google, since it opens a deep and lucrative new data-mining vein for the company. But it's a wave of a white flag for car companies when it comes to delivering their own cloud-based content and services. It also represents a massive data giveaway and, for Audi, a reversal of earlier reservations about letting Google get too much access to car data. Not long after Android Auto and Apple CarPlay were introduced in 2014 and most automakers eagerly embraced the technologies, several German automakers second-guessed their decision when they realized what was at stake: data. At a conference in Berlin in 2015, Audi CEO Rupert Stadler said car owners "want to be in control of their data, and not subject to monitoring." A few months earlier, Stadler stated that "the data that we collect is our data and not Google's.

Junkyard Gem: 1994 Volvo 850 Turbo Wagon

Volvo began selling brick-shaped rear-wheel-drive station wagons in the United States with the 145 in the 1968 model year, continuing the tradition with the 200, 700 and 900 series wagons and all the way through the very last 1998 V90s. The benefits of front-wheel-drive proved impossible for those Goteborgers to resist, though, and so the 850 was developed. The 850 sedan first appeared in the United States as a 1993 model, with the wagon version following in 1994. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those first-year 850 wagons, found in a Colorado Springs self-service yard recently. The 850 wasn't the first production Volvo with front-wheel-drive (the 1986 Volvo 480 beat it to European showrooms), but it was the first one available on our continent. The base 1994 Volvo 850 wagon for the U.S. market had a 2.4-liter DOHC straight-five rated at 168 horsepower and 162 pound-feet, but this car has the turbocharged version with its 222 horses and 221 pound-feet. American buyers of the 1994 Volvo 850 had the choice of a five-speed manual or a four-speed automatic. Most took the automatic. This car is a loaded model with power sunroof and other goodies in addition to the slushbox, so its MSRP was $30,985 (about $66,194 in 2024 dollars). This was a bit less than a similarly equipped 960 wagon (which listed at $34,950, or $74,665 after inflation). The antiquated but reliable 240 wagon had been discontinued the year before, with the 740 wagon getting the axe the year before that). This car just made it past the 200,000-mile mark during its career on the road. That's respectable, though I've found discarded Volvos that made it beyond 400,000 miles (and one that got to 631,999). The interior looked pretty good before someone smashed all the windows. Perhaps vandalism sent a running car to this place. Someone was kind enough to write down the security code on the factory radio. Drive safely. For those of you who hate to commute but adore driving.