2004 Volvo C70 Base Convertible 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Volvo EX30 dropped from 2024 NACTOY contention due to model year cutoff

The North American Car, Truck and Utility of the Year jury announced Tuesday that the Volvo EX30 has been dropped as a finalist for the 2024 Utility of the Year award because it will not be sold to customers in 2023. As it had made it all the way to the final round before Volvo informed the jury that the car would not be available, the EX30 had to be replaced with another contender. The NACTOY board selected the 2024 Hyundai Kona/Kona Electric to fill its slot.  In fact, the EX30 was never intended to be delivered in 2023, a Volvo spokesperson confirmed to Autoblog. "The original plan had us scheduled to open order books [in November], but because we are always evaluating our production timelines and volumes, and make adjustments according to a variety of inputs, we changed that to be not before January," he said.  The other finalists for all three categories remain unchanged. The full list follows.  Car category: Honda Accord, Hyundai Ioniq 6, Toyota Prius Truck category: Chevrolet Colorado, Chevrolet Silverado EV, Ford Super Duty Utility category: Genesis Electrified GV70, Kia EV9, Hyundai Kona/Kona Electric The finalists were chosen from a list of 25, which was previously narrowed down from a comprehensive roster of all vehicles that are new or updated for the 2024 model year — a total of 52 eligible vehicles. Notably absent from the list of finalists were the Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray, Toyota GR Corolla, GMC Canyon, Ford Ranger, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Chevrolet Equinox EV, Mazda CX-90 and Toyota Grand Highlander, among others. The 2024 winners will be announced in January. Autoblog Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is member of the NACTOY jury. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Junkyard Gem: 1984 Volvo 242 DL

Volvo had tremendous success with the iconic 200 Series cars, selling them in North America from the 1975 model year all the way through 1993 (and if you count the Volvo 140, which was the same car from the A pillars rearward, the 240's history goes back to the middle 1960s). Nearly everybody who bought 240s on our continent did so in order to be safe and/or practical, which meant that the two-door version never sold anywhere near as well as its four-door and wagon brethren. Here's one of those rare 240 coupes (technically speaking, a two-door sedan), found in a San Jose car graveyard last winter. If you're going to be a stickler about the designation of this car as a two-door sedan and not as a coupe, you'll also want to call it by the name Volvo used when it was in the showroom: the 1984 Volvo DL. However, everybody in the Volvo world now prefers the original naming system that Volvo used for the 200s back home in Sweden, where you had 2 followed by a numeral indicating the number of engine cylinders and a numeral indicating the number of doors, with the trim-level code after that. So, what we have for today's Junkyard Gem is a Volvo 242 DL, i.e., the cheapest new 240 Americans could buy in 1984. You could get a turbocharged engine from the factory in the 1984 242, but this car has the ordinary naturally-aspirated 2.3-liter straight-four, rated at 111 horsepower. It also has the four-speed manual transmission with overdrive controlled by the button in the middle of the shift knob. Nearly 230,000 miles on the clock, which is decent for any 1980s car but not spectacular by Volvo 240 standards. Many Volvo enthusiasts prefer the smooth lines of the coupe to the stodgier sedans and wagons, and this one shows signs of ownership by someone who wasn't just about listening to NPR while driving safely to the natural-foods store. Sure enough, it has aftermarket springs and a non-factory rear sway bar. I wish I'd found these parts back in 2007, when I was helping to build a V8-swapped Volvo 244 road racer. The presence of the keys in a junkyard car, however, usually indicates that it was voluntarily let go by its final owner. Perhaps it was a dealership trade-in that proved to be impossible to sell due to a combination of three pedals, high miles, and lack of truck-shaped body. The interior looks like it might have been tolerable before it reached this place.

Volvo launches next-gen Sensus Connect infotainment system [w/videos]

To borrow a line from another automaker, the Volvo S60 has the power to surprise - it's likely not top of mind for most entry-level luxury sedan buyers, but it's good enough that it probably should be. There's long been one pretty serious chink in its armor, though, and that goes for the company's entire model line: infotainment. The Swedish marque's offerings just haven't been that feature-rich, but Volvo is working to improve things with its updated Sensus Connect, a suite of functions just launched at this week's CES in Las Vegas.
The new system updates center on cloud-based connectivity advancements that include a novel Park&Pay feature that allows drivers to search for parking and pay for their space from the comfort of their car. Other functions that show off the diversity of Sensus Connect include embedded, Pandora-streaming internet radio, Wikipedia, remote start via smart phone, dealer appointment booking, destination attraction searches and an available wifi hotspot.
All of this increased functionality sounds like a big step in the right direction, and Volvo is noting it has refreshed the system's interface with "graphically themed center and driver displays" along with improved voice control and text-to-speech capabilities.