Fun out of the box

People who own Volvos usually have other cars. They use their Volvos for work and their other vehicles, mostly SUVs, for play. The Volvos – and usually the chauffeurs that drive them – rest on weekends.

Late last month, Viking Cars, the local distributor of Volvo, made me take home one of its cars for a weekend. "This is a totally different car," said Lyn Manalansang, Viking’s senior manager, when I told her I wouldn’t want to take home an executive’s car. "It’s definitely not your typical Volvo," she said.

It turned out Lyn was not exagerrating. When the car arrived at our office parking lot, it instantly got everyone’s attention. "What car is that?" an editor asked the guard. "Oh, a Volvo," he quipped. "It doesn’t look like one."

Volvo’s designers did a heluva good job with the S60, which took the place of the completely boxy S70 sedan that the company decided to phase out. It carries the curves of the mid-sized S80 although in a smaller scale. From the side, the S60 gave the impression of a coupe with four doors.

The S60’s appearance was inviting. Any driver probably would have the same feeling I had the moment I laid my eyes on it. The urge to get in and drive away was simply too hard to resist.

The car’s engine has not even cooled down when three of my colleagues asked me to take them in for a spin. So we got in, eager to discover what this new Volvo had to offer.

Sitting behind the wheel, I quickly got the impression of being inside a true sports sedan. The S60 was truly designed as a driver’s car, with all the controls and gauges placed in my direction. I adjusted my seat electronically and looking behind me, I was surprised that the coupe profile had not robbed the car of any interior space. The cabin can sit five adults comfortably.

We took the car to Luneta for a quickie. Although it was considered an "entry-level" S60, it provided exhilarating acceleration. "Ang lakas ng hatak!" was the first thing I heard from one of my passengers the moment I stepped hard on the gas pedal. We felt the 2.4-liter, five-cylinder engine setting loose all 180 horses. It made me wish Lyn had lent me the top-of-the-line T5 variant which is capable of generating 250 hp.

Look ma, no hands

I drove around Luneta for several minutes until my passengers got curious of the numerous buttons on the dashboard. "What are these?" they asked. I saw a telephone symbol, "Yes" and "No" buttons, and numbers from 1 to 0. "This must be a telephone," I told them.

True enough, the car has a built-in, hands-free phone. The keypad is on the dashboard right next to the stereo and just below it is a slot for the SIM card. The speaker is in my headrest and the microphone is in the rearview mirror.

The phone is made by Ericsson, as evidenced by the icons on its keypad (it made sense since both Ericsson and Volvo are based in Sweden). And it is GSM standard, meaning it receives and sends text messages. The messages appear through a window on the left side of instrument panel.

We stopped for a moment to try the phone. I inserted my SIM card into the slot and after a minute, the window on the instrument panel lit up, showing the words "PH GLOBE" and "MENU". I pressed on the cursor control on the steering wheel to go to my phonebook, picked the name of one of one of our colleague who was still at the office and the phone dialed automatically just like a regular cell phone. The stereo went silent as the person I called answered his phone.

It was an impromptu teleconference as me and my passengers talked simultaneously with our colleague at the office. The voice quality equaled that of a landline and our colleague at the other end of the line sounded as if he was with us in the car.

Safe fun

Giza Loczi, the maverick designer of Volvo who created the S60, said in one interview that he was tasked by his bosses to make a car that would appeal to younger people – "those who wouldn’t normally consider a Volvo" – yet would still carry the same safety features as any car the company has built.

After working on the styling, Loczi fitted the S60 with a stereo system that could probably put all the best after-market set-up to shame. The system has an in-dash CD changer and Dolby ProLogic sound, complete with 13 speakers scattered all over the cabin.

Upon hearing the high-quality sound, one of my passengers reached into her bag and pulled out her favorite CD. "Dito na lang tayo!" she quipped. "Can you drive us all the way to Tagaytay?"

The request, luckily, was just a tease. My pasengers still had to work and I had to go home. And lucky me, I’m going home on the S60.

Traffic, as usual, was terrible that Friday night. But the automatic transmission made my crawling through the gridlock a not-so-hellish experience.

Fun returned when the South Expressway finally cleared, and I started playing again with the S60. With the car phone on, I talked to my wife as I zoomed past all the slow-moving vehicles around me. I tell you, the S60 grips the road like a leech even at 150 kph. Its wider wheelbase gives it the stability of a mid-sized car. And knowing Volvo, I wasn’t worried a bit. This car had ABS, ventilated disc brakes, and front and side airbags.

Going home on a weekend never felt that good. I told myself: Volvo really took the toy and threw the box away with this car. The S60 is something I wouldn’t mind driving all day, all week, and all the time.