It use to be that if you had not purchased your first sedan by 25 you were doing something wrong, and if you were pushing around some little hatch back, you obviously still worked a takeout joint. But now, you can be in your fifties plus and be as cool as liquid helium (Google this, it’s worth it!) behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper or Fiat 500.
Coupled with rocketing oil and fuel prices, C02 taxes and overcrowding in most metropolitan areas, it’s no surprise that small vehicles are taking over the global car market, relegating sedans to the opposite side of the dance floor – not cool enough to be seen with anymore.
But this does put a select few car manufactures in a very tight spot, most significantly Volvo who has always brought home the bacon by making it known that their cars are the safest thing on four wheels.
If you love your family then you better encase them in a Volvo S60, which is an extended metaphor for your love, and while this might have been successful in the past, it doesn’t really work when mini hatchbacks obtain 5 star Euro NCAP safety ratings and come equipped with driver aids and more airbags than maximum occupants.
It is quite expected then that Volvo has announced that they intend to partner up with another manufacturer of vehicles and develop a cost saving small car for the future. These types of relationships are common all over (the Audi A3, VW Golf alliance and Peugeot, Renault tour de force for example), making economic sense through the creation of one platform that can be shared amongst numerous models, and engines that can be reused in different tuning configurations.
What is interesting here, and that in itself is remarkable given that the topic of Volvo seeking a partner at face value is far from news worthy, is that Volvo already uses a modular platform for its current generation of vehicles, which means that they are looking to add a platform base for a car that is smaller than the C30, and by a significant margin if we were to hazard a guess.
The logical comparison would be a Polo-esque car, but given the amount of extra safety orientated kit that Volvo will have to put into it (let’s call it a C20 for arguments sake) to maintain their brands direction, we might be looking at a Mini competitor in a few years.
And that might be something worth getting excited over: a clean lined, Swedish styled mini hatchback with a great interior and that is not made by BMW. And maybe the option of a Polestar adaption in the future...
