Volvo has revealed another teaser image in what’s been rather a long line of teaser images of their upcoming XC90 SUV. With the hype the Swedes have been drumming up over the last year, this is going to have to be one very impressive car.
That said, if its designer Thomas Ingenlath’s acclaimed trio of concept cars (Concept Estate, Concept XC Coupe, Concept Coupe) are anything to go by, the new SUV has every chance of meeting those expectations. The world will find out soon enough when the new Scandi SUV is unveiled in a fortnight at a special event in Stockholm.
This teaser image is the first one of the car’s exterior and at last we see the new face. Sort of. Slightly blurred in the background is the shape of the side mirror and you get a sense the curved contours of the bonnet. In sharp focus however, are the the signature T-shaped daytime running lights – ones the design team has patriotically christened “Thor’s Hammer” after the shape of the hammer used by the Norse god and Marvel comic hero, Thor.
The Volvo XC90 will be the first Volvo built on their new modular platform called the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) that will underpin all of its models sized from the S60. In XC90 guise it the SPA platform provides seven seats in three rows, though only kids and adults shorter than 1,74m will feel comfortable in the third row. The SPA platform has also been designed for hybrid powertrains and the XC90 will introduce a T8 derivative that combines a turbocharged and supercharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine with an electric drive motor.
After that exclusive, celebrity-stocked, cocktail party release mentioned above, the XC90 will first be shown to the rest of us at the 2014 Paris Auto Show in October.
