Can’t Sell Your Wagon? Call It A Crossover

Faced with dismal sales of the Volvo V60, the Swedish auto maker has decided to adopt a time-tested strategy for boosting sales of slow-selling station wagons: turning it into a pseudo-crossover.

Enter the 2015 Volvo V60 Cross Country. The V60 is sure to bring three things to the party

1. All-wheel drive and a turbocharged 5-cylinder engine
2. A minimally raised ride height and the most minor applications of dreaded "cladding"
3. A cohort of malcontent enthusiasts and wagon fanboys ready to denounce it for betraying the Holy Crusade of Wagondom.

My own estimation of the V60 is that it's a very nice car, but not a great station wagon, in the traditional sense of the word. If you want that, you ought to take a look at an XC70, which unfortunately, does not pass the Wahabbi-esque purity tests of the wagon jihadis (namely. no "cladding" and a marginally lower ride height, lest they be infected with the common-stock stench of crossover-dom). The fact that the XC70 soundly beats the V60 in terms of cargo and people carrying capacity is irrelevant. The wide world of wagons in America is about status signalling and ideological superiority, not the cold realities of dimensions and consumer tastes.

But I'm happy that Volvo is bringing out this model. There is no way that it won't raise sales of the entire V60 range, which means that Volvo will make more money. And that might mean we get something like the V40 in the future. And that's the compact wagon that I've been waiting for…

The post Can't Sell Your Wagon? Call It A Crossover appeared first on The Truth About Cars.

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