VOLVO V90 1997-1998 Photos, engines & full specs

At the end of the '90s, Volvo started to change its car's names from numbers to a combination of letters and numbers, and that's how the short-lived V90 appeared on the market.

Volvo was losing ground on the market, and its boxy-looking vehicles were no longer in trend. The carmaker decided to do something about that and, after failing to join Renault in 1993, it went on and tried to rise back on its own feet. The V90 was a rebadged 960 Station Wagon. It was introduced in 1997, and it survived only a year on the market before being cut out from the assembly line. The nameplate returned only in 2016.

The Swedish brand managers already saw the shift on the market toward vehicles with smoother, fluid lines. It was the beginning of the biodesign era, and Volvo was still stuck in the late '70s time with its wedged-shaped vehicles. With the 850 series, which was renamed as S/V70, Volvo's designers introduced rounded edges and smoother lines. The carmaker applied the same treatment to the 960, but it was too complicated to make curved body panels on a structure designed decades ago for the 740/760 Series.

Inside, there was a bigger improvement. With its new dashboard design inspired by the 850 model, the V90 featured a compact driving post with an instrument cluster that featured a speedometer, a tachometer, and two gauges. The integrated center stack housed the ventilation and the stereo-cassette player. Thanks to its folding rear bench, the trunk could have been increased.

Under the hood, Volvo V90 relied on the 3.0-liter gasoline engine paired to a standard 5-speed manual. A 4-speed automatic transmission was on the options list.