ALWYN VILJOEN compares the safe-as-houses Volvo S60 T6 AWD to Australia’s Tower of Terror
THE Tower of Terror II, built in that madcap province of Oz, Queensland, ranks among the world’s top-five roller-coaster rides for speed and ability to induce fear and fun.
It has a lot in common with the Volvo T6 AWD. The Volvo is also not the fastest, loopiest ride out there, but mash your foot down and it will put you on top of a power tower for as long as you care to accelerate.
Which will be until you scrape over a speed hump. Or notice the immediate consumption, next to those blue dials. That’s when the frisson of terror kicks in.
It’s all to do with levers, see. Archimedes of course said that with a long enough one, he could move the earth. Volvo went and shoved well over half-a-metre’s worth of leverage under the six, palm-sized pistons in the three-litre block of its T6. (In horsepower-speak, the stroke of the piston shaft is longer than the radius of the piston heads — an “overstroked” engine.) All you need to know is that there’s room for a big fire on top, a long lever at the bottom, and each time you put foot on either pedal, everything works like Thor’s hammer.
All that power comes relatively cheaply, too.
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| Inside, all the gadgets are idiot-friendly. Why do German designers persist with tiny buttons? |
Careful scrutiny of the more than 1 500 vehicles on sale in SA in 2012 revealed that the Volvo S60 T6 offers the most torque for the lowest price from a petrol engine. Any other engine with similar levels of raw power is either a diesel, like the Peugeot’s very lekker 508 2,2 Hdi (150 kW/450 Nm), or a van, like Mercedes-Benz’s even lekkerder Viano (165 kW/440 Nm). Petrol engines with 400 or more Newtons all cost from about a grand to a million rand more, with the Audi 3,0 FSI Quattro S-tronic (220 kW/440 Nm) at R655 000 being a prime example.
As you accelerate, Volvo’s sequential, six-speed geartronic box seamlessly changes the cogs, and the 440 Nms give your kidneys a massage through the comfortable full-leather bucket seats. Unfortunately, your kidneys will need the massage, as the T6’s suspension set-up is halfway between jarring and stiff.
Around the N3’s gentle curves, the bumps are not that noticeable. Peel off onto the meander, and the old R103 will soon have you straightening in the seat.
And before you tackle hairpin bends, warn the lady to shove a few hairpins into her own coiffure. Despite the hard suspension and all-wheel-drive, the T6 also under steers to that seat-clenching point where you can clearly make out the whites in the oncoming driver’s eyes.
Seems Volvo, like Merc, deemed it safer for you to just go straight through the apex and slam into an airbag, rather than roll the car. But hey, at least all its electronics are idiot-friendly, unlike any German model you care to mention.
On the downside, the S60 T6 AWD is almost wilfully obtuse in the corners, compared to say, the Alfa 159 (see Gordon Hall’s review on page 14). Then, its 4 628-metre body is also just higher than the average ballpoint pen is long, with a ground clearance of 13,6 centimetres.
If you do mash the carpet a bit the 67-litre tank empties pretty fast with the immediate consumption hovering at about 55 l/100 km. Volvo wants R476 000 for the S60 T6 Essential Geartronic, and its logical competitors are the Honda Accord and Lexus IS250.
In rands for Newtons, however, the S60 T6 gets the stiffest competition from BMW’s six-cylinder, 2 979 cc block, which generates 225 kW/400 Nm. But for its grin-inducing ability, T6 buyers may also want to go kick the wheels of Alfa’s 159 3,2 V6 Distinctive auto for R430 000.
• Alwyn.Viljoen@witness.co.zaThe numbers
Price: R476 000
Engine: 2 953 cc, six-cylinder, 24 valves, turbocharged
Power: 224 kW at 5 800 rpm
Torque: 440 Nm between 2 100 and 4 200 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 7,7 seconds
Maximum speed: untested
Real-life fuel consumption: between 55 litres/100 and 10,3 litres/100 km
Emissions class: Euro 5
Tank: 68 litres
EuroNCap rating: five stars
Warranty: five years per 100 000 km
Roadside assistance: three years
Service plan: five years per 100 000 km
Power, price and fun rivals
R409 900 Peugeot 508 2,2 Hdi (150 kW/450 Nm)
R430 000 Alfa’s 159 3,2 V6 Distinctive auto, (191 kW/322 Nm)
R451 537 BMW 135i coupé (225k W/400 Nm)
