2011 Volvo S40 T5 13000miles Only Like New on 2040-cars

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Russian auto boomtown grinds to halt over Ukraine sanctions

Thousands of auto workers have been furloughed and food prices are soaring as Western sanctions pummel the small Russian city of Kaluga and its flagship foreign carmakers, with more sanctions likely to come. The Kaluga region, 190 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of Moscow, says it has attracted more than 1.3 trillion roubles ($15 billion) in investment, mostly foreign, since 2006. But Western sanctions imposed in recent weeks after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine have exacerbated lingering component shortages and halted production at two flagship car plants, Germany's Volkswagen and Sweden's Volvo. A third, the PSMA Rus plant that is a joint venture between Stellantis and Mitsubishi and employs 2,000, may halt production soon due to a lack of parts, Stellantis' chief executive said last Thursday. "It is not clear what will happen. They don't give us any concrete information," said Pavel Terpugov, a welder at the PSMA Rus plant. Terpugov said he needs twice as much money to buy groceries than before the sanctions. Analysts have forecast Russian inflation could soar to 24% this year, while the economy may shrink to 2009 levels. The United States and Europe are weighing more sanctions against Russia after Ukraine accused Russian forces of civilian killings in northern Ukraine, where a mass grave was found in Bucha, outside Kyiv. Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" and the Kremlin categorically denied any accusations related to the murder of civilians, including in Bucha. One source of hope for some in Kaluga, with its 325,000 residents, is the West may be reluctant to hurt its own companies. "Does it make sense to impose sanctions on its own plant and lose money?" said Valery Uglov, an auto mechanic at the Volkswagen plant. "Does it make sense to lose the Russian market?" "We hope to return to work as soon as possible and everyone will have confidence in the future again," Uglov said. Volkswagen, whose factory employs 4,200 people, in early March suspended operations. A spokeswoman said production remained frozen. Volvo Group, which employs over 600 people to build trucks, also suspended production. Even before the sanctions, Russian car sales had contracted from 2.8 million units from when the Volkswagen factory opened in 2007 to 1.67 million units last year, damaged by both sanctions after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Volvo rolls out new R-Design versions of S60, XC60 and new V60

Volvo has put together R-Design packages for its newly facelifted S60, V60 and XC60 models, and for those who want more bark to go with them, there's a power upgrade for the S60 and V60 courtesy of Polestar performance. The aesthetics start with new front and rear fascias, the grille going frameless and Tech Matte Black with a silk metal diagonal bar, the back end getting a finned diffuser and round R-Design tailpipes. On top of that, the S60 and V60 are lowered 15 millimeters and can be fitted with 19-inch versions of the company's Ixion wheel pattern.
The R-Design sport chassis stiffens things up, items like the rear dampers getting 20-percent stiffer while front bushings get a whopping 400-percent stiffer. Inside there's a black headliner, perforated leather mixed with nubuck and contrasting stitching on the sport seats, or a full leather option for those who love their cow, and the Adaptive Digital Display gets a blue hue when set to the Elegance appearance theme.
Buyers of the 3.0-liter T6 engine can add the Polestar performance option, which cranks things up to 329 horsepower instead of the standard 304 hp, and an exclusive accelerator pedal comes with it. More detail can be found in the press release below.

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Volvo V90

Volvo's "Brick Era" of squared-off rear-wheel-drive machines lasted from the debut of the 144 in 1966 all the way through the 900 Series cars of the 1990s, with the wildly successful 240 being the most iconic of the breed on our shores. The final chapter of the Swedish Brick saga came in the 1997 and 1998 model years, when the 960 sedan and wagon were rebadged as the S90 and V90, respectively. Here's one of those cars, a refrigerator-colored (and refrigerator-shaped) V90 wagon that got forcibly retired after a crash in Northern California. Volvo revived the V90 name in 2016, and you can buy a new V90 right now if you so choose. Today's Junkyard Gem, however, is the culmination of four decades of improvement to the original 140 design (itself based on much of the Amazon's chassis features and sharing plenty of components with the 1940s-era PV Series cars), while the current V90 comes straight out of the 21st century. I've been going out of my way to document just about every discarded 140 and 240 wagon I find, with some 740s and 940s mixed in. Many Volvo longroof owners still maintain a fanatical devotion to the rear-wheel-drive bricks, and I've found some of these cars in junkyards with impressively high final odometer readings. The fuel-efficiency and interior-space limitations of the old-timey brick design kept 960 sales lower than those of their predecessors, though, and I haven't met any 960 owners who share the level of devotion that 145 and 245 owners lavish on their cars. This car just squeaked past 150,000 miles during its 24 years on the road. The body and interior look to have been in very nice condition, showing that meticulous owners took good care of this car throughout its life, but then it got T-boned on the right side. This sort of damage isn't worth fixing on a quarter-century-old European wagon, and so here it sits. This engine compartment looks very similar to that of the old 240, though this modern 3.0-liter, DOHC straight-six and its 181 horses runs counter to the super-sensible spirit of most of those 1970s Goteborg bricks. The 960 was far more plush than its ancestors, and priced accordingly. In 1997, this car's list price started at $35,850 (about $60,660 in 2021 dollars). By comparison, a new 1975 245 wagon had an MSRP of $5,795 (about $29,940 today).