Chevy Malibu Better than Volvo S60 In Recent IIHS Side Impact Test ????

The Volvo's design is also older then any one of those cars - The Mailbu shares a platform with the Saab 9-3, and the Saab was picked as Swedens safest car (could have been the 9-5... but I know the 9-3 is very safe too)... so Saab knows a thing or two about safety, and teaches GM, as Volvo teaches Ford.

The Audi was also redesigned for this year.

What is more disapointing is that the new S40 got acceptable, to have the new Jetta really show everyone how to make a small car safe, it got a Best Pick for side, and a Good rating (tho not best pick) for frontal offset.

Sometime in the 90s Volvo clearly changed it's focus to go after the trendy-fashion thing and leave behind their traditional priorities. The current sales success of the XC90 is likely to continue encouraging Volvo down the fashion path. The problem with fashion is that success is always fleeting.

John

What else could they have done? They had to put a bit more style into their products... everyone else did, Mercedes cars were generally just as ugly and Audi cars were far uglier then the Volvo's of the 80's - and both companies changed their styles in pretty much the same way - first rounded squares, then more swoopy designs... Audi still has more of a rounded square shape until very recently... MB has made all their cars ugly (IMO), and Volvo's - well they still look muscular, strong, and Volvo-ish to me... Tho I only grew up with Volvos from the 70's/80's.

If they kept selling highly functional boxes only an enthusiast would love, they would have gone bankrupt - look how few people actually buy Saabs, and look at the stop gap solutions GM is coming up with to "help" them (rebadged Imprezza and Trailblazer - Volvo's building their own cars on top-notch global platforms that they do a lot of design work on - and they still use all their own engines).... The XC90 is well received... It's an SUV, so what - it's how you make money, don't like it - don't buy it... Its safer then a V70 in general, except on accident avoidance - performs well, and it's low emissions... Every car maker needs an SUV right now - because people want them, if you don't build what your customers want, you lose sales to other companies.

Other manufactures are catching up, Volvo was decades ahead years ago but it's inevitable that some others will begin to catch up eventually, there reaches a point when there's much less left to improve.

Right. For example: