Man, am I out of place,’ I thought. Me in my faded jeans (and not the stylish kind either) and equally faded chequered shirt in fair Verona. ‘As if this isn’t enough, now I have to drive a Volvo. Why couldn’t it have been something more exotic?’ I complained to myself. It’s just what that country does to you, methinks. Everything just has to be red, loud and desirable. Which, I thought, a Volvo could never be. Until now.
Agreed, the ‘vibrant copper’ S60s that I sampled were not red (or loud, for that matter), but they definitely looked the part. Standing in a 16th-century structure’s courtyard and bathed in bright sunshine, the S60 certainly got more than a few admiring glances (so what if the shade looks like a derivative of the plain Volvo beige). I, for one, couldn’t believe that a Volvo can look as fetching as the S60. And that’s where Volvo’s already won the battle, I think.
No man or woman on earth is ever going to say that Volvos are shoddily built cars. Also, Volvo has always done things a bit differently than their German counterparts. But ask any prospective car buyer in India, and you’ll find that they don’t consider buying Volvos mainly because the cars don’t look flashy and expensive enough. The S60, when it is launched in a few months’ time, will sweep that staid image out of peoples’ minds. It certainly did that to me.
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