Volvo S60 and V60 are no longer available to order
Volvo S60, V60 and V90 follow S90 into retirement; bespoke emergency services spec cars to continue
Volvo now exclusively sells SUVs in the UK, having discontinued all of its saloon and estate cars.
The Volvo S60 saloon, as well as the Volvo V60 and Volvo V90 estates, are no longer listed on the Swedish firm’s online configurator (although they can still be ordered pre-configured from dealer stock).
Volvo’s largest saloon, the S90, was removed from sale earlier this summer as part of a wider “consolidation” of the firm’s range, with the rugged V60 and V90 Cross Country estate models also bowing out.
The S60 was removed from sale last year as part of an internal evaluation process but later added back to the order books “for the medium-term future”.
The South Carolina plant where Volvo builds the S60 is in the process of being revamped to build electric SUVs for Volvo and sibling brand Polestar, which are each due on sale in 2024.
It has said the S90, V60, V90, and the latter two’s Cross Country variants will continue to be made in authority specifications.
These vehicles differ from customers models as, due to their intended use, they combine high performance with lower interior specifications, uprated payload capacity and upgraded brakes. The 112mph speed limiter is also disabled.
In a statement sent to Autocar, Volvo said: “We continue to rapidly transform our product offer, which means not only moving towards full electrification, but also shifting to new platforms and technologies across all our cars. We will naturally need to evolve and consolidate our line-up as we prioritise fully electric cars and make this technological transition.
“As a result, we have removed further models from the UK line-up. These include the S60, V60 and V90. Demand for our existing SUV line-up continues to grow, while interest in our forthcoming fully electric EX30 and EX90 models is strong. Meanwhile, appetite for our saloon and estate models has fallen to very low levels in the UK, which has led to our decision to remove these models from sale in the UK.”
Volvo recently published its global sales figures for the first half of 2023, revealing that its most popular car – an SUV – outsold its entire saloon and estate range by a margin of nearly 70%.
The S90 was the most popular of the now-discontinued cars, with 23,000 sales over the six-month period. The S60 accounted for 18,000 and the V60 just over 16,000. The V90, however, notched up just 7100.
The best-selling Volvo XC60, meanwhile, sold 106,000, remaining hugely popular even in its sixth year on sale.
With all saloons and estates taken off sale, Volvo now sells exclusively SUVs. The closely related XC40 and Volvo C40 Recharge open the current range, while the mid-sized XC60 fills the gap between them and the seven-seat Volvo XC90.
The future of Volvo’s non-SUV models has long been unclear. The firm has committed to offering a pure-electric range by 2030, with new EVs due at a rate of one per year until then.
The new EX30 crossover will land later this year, followed by the seven-seat EX90 in 2024 and a successor to the XC60 in 2025.
Beyond that, Volvo has given no categoric indication that it will directly replace its comparatively slow-selling S and V model lines with EVs, although boss Jim Rowan has hinted that lower-slung models will return.
“Suffice to say we play across all the spectrums and range, and we have customers who require different vehicles and different uses for vehicles,” he said. “We will try and make sure that we can capture as much of that as we possibly can.”
However, he added that having “40 different models” wasn’t Volvo’s strategy and that the line-up would be designed to cater to segments in the most demand.
“We’ve teased what’s coming next and we had already signalled we would do a smaller SUV,” he said prior to the unveiling of the EX30. “Then different formats, saloons and estates or whatever: we will get to that when we get to that.”
Previous CEO Håkan Samuelsson suggested Volvo’s future lay predominantly in SUVs back in 2021 when he acknowledged that “people are really fond of high seating positions”.
He did say, however, that Volvo would seek to launch SUVs that were “more streamlined” and less “square”, with “softer rooflines” in the name of aerodynamic efficiency.
Source: Autocar
