Safe bet

It's confirmed then, the Volvo S80 and XC90 are on their way

The Indian luxury car market seems quite ir resistible to automakers. Volvo is now all set to enter the category, with two of their best-sellers, the S80 sedan and the XC90 SUV. When? By the end of this year, you will be able to pick them up at their dealerships at Mumbai, Delhi and Chandigarh.

And by end-2008, more dealerships will be up at Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Kolkata and Jaipur. But you have already heard about this, haven't you? So this time around, we can give you more details.

Both the S80 and the XC90 will share the same drivetrains, two petrols and one diesel. The oil-burner is a 2500cc five-cylinder motor, and is the top performer in Volvo's diesel lineup, developing 185 bhp and over 40 kgm of torque. Of the two petrol powerplants, one is a 3200cc inline-six with 238 bhp and 32.6 kgm of torque and the other is the Yamaha-developed 4400cc V8 that produces 315 horses and 44.8 kgm of torque.

Paired to the engines is a six-speed Geartronic transmission that allows you to shift manually as well. While the SUV comes with AWD as standard, the V8 saloon will also have power going to all the four wheels. Yes, Volvo certainly are not compromising on the drivetrain front at least. Prices? Well, that will be announced closer to launch, but we estimate the S80 to be priced at Mercedes-Benz E-Class levels "" around Rs 40 lakh "" while the XC90 should be about Rs 10 lakh more.

The cars will be brought in as completely built units, shipped from Volvo's plant at Gothenburg in Sweden to Chennai. Volvo hasn't had any reason to make any significant changes to the cars to be sold in India, except for minor revisions like better engine cooling, a heavy duty horn and a full-size spare wheel.

As has been reported earlier, Volvo Cars India will be a subsidiary of Ford India, where Volvo will outsource human resources, logistics, finance, IT and other allied services from Ford, but will independently market and sell their cars.

What can we say, but welcome!