Finally, a due date.
Resurgent Swedish carmaker Volvo has once again teased its impending world-beating XC40 compact SUV, but this time it’s revealed a key detail. While we’ve known for some time that the XC40 was incoming, we were never really certain when it would be arriving.
Well now, we do. In a video uploaded to Twitter, Volvo has announced that the XC40 will be coming to the world on the 21st of this month, far sooner than we expected. We knew that the car would be hitting the market in Q1 2018, so a debut about now is relatively early. In any case, the XC40 will be hitting the market and keeping cars like the Audi Q3, BMW X1, and Mercedes-Benz GLA in its crosshairs, and promises to do so with the same pomp and Nordic style as its siblings.
Speaking at the Detroit motor show earlier this year, Volvo R&D boss Henrik Green said that the XC40 would be the first new Volvo to ride on the company’s CMA architecture, designed for compact cars. The R&D boss said that the base development work of the car had already been completed by February of this year, with further R&D testing required ahead of the launch.
Volvo knows what it’s doing when it comes to SUVs. The new XC90 continues to rack up awards around the world, while the XC60 (recently swapped out for an all-new model, too) remains as the brand’s best-selling model. The CMA platform that’ll underpin Volvo’s new range of compact cars will also be used across the Geely family of products, and will likely find its way into Lynk&Co. offerings in the future.
The teaser offered this time round shows us a little bit of the XC40’s design details, showing off things like the badging on either end of the car as well as the all-important Thor’s hammer daytime running lights (themselves appear presented in a way we’ve never seen before). The big reveal comes in a series of numbers: 21.09.17, finally telling us when we can expect to know all there is about this new Swedish toy.
Once the the XC40 has had its time in the limelight, Volvo is expected to then bring the V40 hatchback and estate to market sometime in 2019. Whatever remains of Volvo’s older-generation cars have to be replaced soon, and fast, ahead of Volvo’s plan to have the entire rage electrified by the end of the decade.
The XC40’s headlining powertrain will be a petrol-electric hybrid, utilising a 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol mated to an electric motor in a setup not dissimilar to the T8 TwinEngine arrangement in the 90-Series cars, though the three-pot hybrid will be called the ‘T5 TwinEngine.’ Mated to a seven-speed dual clutch gearbox, the T5 TwinEngine cars should be good for about 50km of full-electric range.
Design-wise, the XC40 is expected to stay faithful to what we’ve seen in the Concept 40.1 that we’re showing you see, with the cabin to take significant influence from Volvo’s latest crop of cars. Expect a large portrait-oriented screen in the centre to handle almost all functions, with only a handful of shortcut buttons arranged sensibly on the centre stack. The XC40 is expected to play a significant role in getting Volvo’s brand in a more prominent position, with the XC40 predicted to achieve sales figures comparable to or surpassing the immense success of the bigger XC60, which remains Europe’s favourite SUV in the class.
Further, given the XC40’s positioning to take aim at a more youthful audience, the Volvo compact crossover is expected to pack a more involving drive than the rest of the range (just like the 40-Series cars have done in the past) and push the brand further in a direction that they’ve never really explored before. Regardless, we are anxious to see how the XC40 shapes up when it makes its debut next week.
For more information on Volvo, check out our Showroom.
