S40?

From what I can gather from the Car and Driver Magazine preview it is based on a new platform co-designed with Mazda, and Ford. It will be the chassis of smaller cars by Volvo, Mazda, and Ford. Power is pure Volvo: 5 cylinder motors of 168hp and 218 hp. The 218Hp is in the T5 version, has 236lbft of torque. There will be an AWD version coming later on, as well as the V50 wagon.

Apparantly it's almost as fun to drive as the S60R, and that dashboard and whole cabin layout looks pretty sweet. Standard transmissions are now offered, I believe with 6 speeds, automatic is availible as well, of course.

You mean it doesn't share platform with the Mitsubishi Carisma anymore?

I thought something like that was only going to happen for MY2005???

"Patrick" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Correct, that combination was built in the dutch plant at Born. The new S40 wil be built in Belgium (Genk?), while Born makes the new Smart and another model based on the same platform.

The new S40 looks like a smaller S60 now, and is built on a new global platform under the Ford family of companies. The main developers of it seem to be Volvo and Mazda tho... Ford seem to be just using other peoples technology, hell they are builing three cars off the Volvo P2 platform for the upcoming few model years.

It looks more like a small s80 to me. s60 has a unique greenhouse. s40 also looks a bit Audi-ish.

The main developers of it seem

Actually, Ford has a lot to do with the platform. Volvo and Mazda are using their highly praised Focus chassis.

Ben

The Focus, the present European Focus, has been highly praised and the new platform's chassis is mostly based on Ford's control blade chassis. So, alot of the improved dynamic qualities are part of Ford's (Europe Ford's) work. The American Ford is a cheapened version, an economy car with solid handling. Volvo's strength is the crashworthiness and that was much of Volvo's contributions. I think 60 percent of the car is shared but reports are that there are huge differences between the feel of the three cars.

At any rate, the new s40 looks like it is the s80/s60 family, is an improved vehicle. With the new looks and excellent dynamics, and Volvo crashworthiness, it should be a much better seller.

Ben