After my Volvo S60 D5 test drive I thought a Volvo from the petrol persuasion was in order, so I set my sights on the biggest, meanest and most sporty sedan Volvo has to offer. The Volvo S60 T6. With a great salesman and luck on my side, I got to test drive the performance enhanced Polestar edition.

With the Polestar upgrade delivering about 10% extra, the T6 delivers a very reasonable 246kW and 484Nm of torque, placing it slightly above performance figures claimed by the BMW 335i. Surprisingly, the straight-six did not deliver the sound track I expected and the overall impression was of luxury and comfort instead of brute force performance. The six speed gearbox seemed a tad slow, but once in gear an eye on the speedometer alerts that you are fast reaching “meeting bubba” speeds.

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When I walked into the showroom the sales person told me: “Once you’ve driven the S60 you will never want to drive anything else”.

I was excited to test this theory because powering the Volvo S60 D5 is a 2.4 liter, 5 cylinder turbo diesel engine, producing 158Kw and 440Nm, and indeed I found it to be no slug.

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Volvo will be launching their eagerly anticipated, all-new V40 at the Geneve Motor Show on Tuesday, 6 March 2012. Their new “German Contender” 5-door hatch is claimed to be a completely different type of Volvo.

From the cloth clad photo one can already see that they’ve designed it with some very sporty lines. With the C30 looking quite dated when compared to its competitors in the segment, will this be the new hot hatch to have?

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