2007 Volvo Xc70 Wagon Black Sunroof Power Seats Leather on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Volvo S60 Polestar Concept looking Smurfy in Jay Leno's Garage

Is it just us, or has Jay Leno's Garage evolved from an intimate, off-the-cuff video series designed to show off the late-night comedian's automobile collection into something a lot more ambitious and... mainstream? This isn't a complaint, exactly, as Leno has been putting out engaging videos at an increasingly furious pace. However, we can't help but note that the subjects have largely graduated from the funnyman's steam-powered eccentricities and forgotten classics to lots of new production and concept cars, often with automaker execs in tow. It's almost as if the series is turning into an internet version of his NBC talk show, one where bigwigs swing by to show off their latest projects as part of their publicity tours, only instead of new movies and albums, it's cars or the occasional motorcycle.
Such is the exactly case with Volvo's stonking S60 Polestar Concept, which makes its appearance in Jay's warehouse of wonders this week. Tuned by in-house skunkworks Polestar, the "Swedish Racing Blue" S60 has certainly been making the rounds as of late, with recent appearances near Leno's garage at the LA Auto Show and an Auto Motor und Sport track faceoff against the BMW M3 and Audi RS4 Avant.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Volvo is so keen to get its showcar in front of the cameras - last we heard, executives were seriously considering a small production run for their unlikely 508-horsepower, all-wheel drive sport sedan, though we continue to hear that realistic pricing is likely to be a roadblock.

Volvo celebrates 20 years of sleeper wagons with 850 T-5R and V60 Polestar

I must have been around Bar Mitzvah age when I was in the back of my parents' car on the highway as we passed a truck full of Volvo 850 T-5R wagons - half of them in black, half in banana yellow. It was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen: a whole gaggle of sleeper power wagons that were infinitely cooler than whatever minivan we were riding in. Hard to believe that was 20 years ago, but it was. And Polestar is understandably keen to mark the anniversary of the first overt Volvo performance wagon.
While Volvo's racing partner hasn't released some commemorative edition to celebrate that prototypical sleeper, it has shot a special batch of photos of the T-5R (based on the 850 wagon internally known as the 855 for its five doors) alongside its modern successor, the V60 Polestar. The images shot in Huntington Beach, CA, only go to show how much has changed in the two decades that separate them.
Whereas this front-drive T-5R packed a turbocharged inline-five driving 240 horsepower through a four-speed automatic propel the yellow box to 62 in 7.0 seconds, the turbo six in the svelter, Rebel Blue-clad 2015 V60 Polestar churns out 350 hp to all four wheels through a six-speed auto for a 4.9-second sprint. That's the kind of progress we can get behind. In fact, it's the sort of progress that everyone can get behind, really, because chances are whatever you're driving will probably have a hard time keeping up.

Volvo demos autonomous self-parking car concept

A number of companies are developing autonomous vehicle technology - Google and Audi come to mind - but Volvo is applying its work in the area to a particular usage case: parking. The Swedish automaker has the technology up and running in a concept vehicle, which it says can be dropped off at the curb by its owner and left to its own devices to enter and navigate a car park, then find and park in an available parking spot. Volvo says the process can even be reversed when the owner is ready to go, with the car leaving the car park on its own to meet its key-holder again at the curb.
The vehicle first interacts with Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology, which places transmitters in the road itself to inform the car (and driver) if the self-parking service is available. The driver then hops out, activates the Self Parking function on his or her smartphone and then leaves the car to do its work. The car uses sensors, all seemingly hidden from view (an advancement of its own in this field), to autonomously navigate the car park, which includes interacting and adjusting to other cars, people and objects.
The technology used here builds off of Volvo's other work in autonomous vehicle research, namely the Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) project in which the company managed to create a train of four cars autonomously following a lead truck at speeds up 56 miles per hour. Volvo says the first application of its autonomous research in a production vehicle will happen at the end of 2014 with some level of autonomous steering available in the next-generation XC90. See the system in action by watching the video below.