Volvo on the hunt for caring eco-warriors

• December
• 4

12:49 am Trucks

YOUR mental image of a Volvo driver probably involves hats on parcel shelves, bowling club whites and retirement home car parks.

Then there’s pulling out of junctions without looking, hogging fast lanes and taking corners slower than a fully loaded supermarket trolley. But you’re locked onto the old image of a bloody Volvo driver. The Swedes have another idea.
The next time you see a Volvo advert on TV it will be full of athletic twenty-somethings coming home from an invigorating day’s adventuring in the alps. They will be packed five up in a wagon but smiling comfortably because there’s plenty of room for them and their gear.

The background tune will have hooked you by now, despite its irritating nursery rhyme refrain. On the slow ride down the mountain coy glances start to be exchanged between the men and women. Mmmm … this sexy car-load look like they’re heading for a steamy menage a cinque in an apres-adventure hot tub.

These are the sort of people Volvo calls “modern lifers” and we’ve been sentenced to them. They’re a group of friends rather than Nan and Pop Volvo, or mum, dad and the kids. They’re strong, confident doers who are tolerant and social. They’re also impossibly healthy, good looking and smug. They’re the new breed of bloody Volvo drivers and I hate them already.

Marketing manager Matt Braid explained the global repositioning: “The traditional family structure - as we all know - is changing day by day,” he said this week. “We thought targeting modern families could potentially be limiting our segment. So we’ve revised our target group to ‘modern lifers’, which focuses on a consumer’s attitude to life rather than a particular life stage they’ve gone through.”

Volvo’s third generation XC70, the archetypal big Swedish wagon, kicks off the new campaign. It was launched this week in the Kevin Rudd heartland of Queensland and just like our new PM, Volvo is ready to ride the environmental wave.

“We think there’s a distinct movement from the 1980s and early 90s ‘me, me, me’ - excess for its own sake and luxury - to the power of ‘we’, as far as peace, the environment, and caring for the earth,” added Braid. “We see that becoming more prevalent among our target group.” The tagline for the campaign is “Life is better lived together”.

I ended up a little unsure about exactly how this bigger version of a Volvo staple is greener and more gregarious. Even Volvo describes the new XC70 as more macho than before, with an aggressive face, jutting angular surfaces and blingy bits of chrome. A projecting front skid plate, picked out in silver, supposedly makes the car safer for pedestrians when you run into them, although it looks as though it would cut them off at the shins.

Despite these tweaks, the XC70 is still obviously a Volvo wagon with a square profile, plastic cladding at skirt level and high-rise tail-lights which could guide incoming aircraft.

A radical theory of modern living arrangements hasn’t stopped Volvo making it friendly to the trad family, with thoughtful touches like built-in child seat boosters and a practical load area. There are additional high-tech features, too, like a collision warning system and hill descent control for slowly picking your way down an offroad gradient when there’s a full load of broad-minded young hikers aboard.

For the first time, Volvo offers the XC70 with diesel - 2.4-litre five-cylinder - and a six-cylinder petrol in the shape of the 3.2-litre unit which debuted recently in the S80 luxury sedan.

Volvo Australia managing director Alan Desselss said the XC70 was heartland territory for the brand where it could shine without being overshadowed by the Germans. They, of course, are all about “me”.

Volvo Australia sales have bounced back over the past few years and are up 25 per cent on 2006, year-to-date. The XC70 will contribute around 900 sales to a full-year total exceeding 5000 in 2008. “The XC70 will be the growth we’re looking for in 2008,” Desselss said.

The star of the range will be a single low-slung V70 model stripped of its offroad airs and aimed at performance buyers. Powered by a 210kW twin-turbo 3.0-litre six-cylinder driving all four wheels, it arrives early next year priced around $70,000.

Unlike Jaguar and Land Rover, Ford’s Swedish brand is not for sale and CEO Alan Mulally recently granted it increased autonomy. He must be a “we” sorta guy.