When you are considering to buy a luxury-brand car, I bet most of you will not think Volvo has the same prestige image as the three German brands (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi).
The reasons for this is quite complicated, but one of them is the fact that, Volvo does not has a “real” full-size sedan in its product line at this moment. There is an implicit rule in the industry that, a brand that does not has a full size large luxury sedan, cannot be considered to be a “real” luxury brand (of cause there is always exceptions like the Bugatti – but even it is considering a sedan model now, please read our previous report).
The largest sedan in Volvo’s product line is the S80. Designed more than 8 years ago, with a wheelbase of only 111.6 inches and weights less than 3,800 lbs (for the fully equipped and optioned T6 Premier Plus AWD trim), it cannot be counted as a full-size sedan.
So the ambitious Volvo is planning to build a full-size sedan named “S100”, which is essentially an extended version of the future S80 sedan. Competitors of the S100 are other luxury brands’ full size sedan, such as the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7-Series, Audi A8 and the Lexus LS.
There are several issues the S100 need to solve to be capable to compete in the market: 1. the front-wheel-drive layout (see our analysis on the Volvo Scalable Product Architecture); 2. the 4-cylinder engine power plant. This is because in most people’s mind, rear-wheel-drive layout and number of cylinders of the engine really matters for full-size luxury sedans.
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