NEVER considered a Volvo? Might be time you did thanks to a radical and very tax advantageous re-working of the engine range.
In future, every engine in the new Volvo Drive-E line-up will be a four-cylinder unit and fuel consumption and emissions will be slashed. With a result, Volvo says business users choosing a Volvo over other premium brands will benefit to the tune of £35 to £100 a month.
For example a 20 per cent tax payer who goes for Volvo’s S60 Business Edition with the new Drive-E D4 diesel will pay £54 a month in company car tax compared with £90 for BMW’s 320d SE. For 40 per cent payers the difference will be more than £70.
Volvo’s X60 D4 FWD R-Design will attract company car tax of £97/£194 while an equivalent Land Rover Freelander 2.2 eD4 costs £130/£278 a month – and that’s before you add in the road tax and fuel cost savings on offer.
Over the next two years Volvo will dump all of its current eight different engine architectures and replace them with just two four cylinder units – one petrol, one diesel.
Every single future engine, no matter how much power it has, will be based on these two, while an impressive new eight-speed gearbox is debuting too.
According to Volvo’s Derek Crabb, in charge of the new technology project, the number of cylinders in an engine is no longer relevant to its power or driveability. “By making the engine smaller we make it more efficient,” he says.
The results are seriously impressive – the Drive-E diesels span power outputs from 120 to 230hp, the petrols start at 140 horsepower and go up past 300. “We’ll develop smaller, more efficient engines with so much power they will turn V8s into dinosaurs,” Crabb says.
