2011 Volvo S60 Official Details and Photos Released

With the 2010 Geneva Auto Show less than a month away, Swedish carmaker Volvo pulled the wraps off the long awaited Volvo S60, marking the carmaker's entry in the CD Premium car segment. The car will be presented, for the first time, at the aforementioned show, bringing with it an entire array of new safety, infotainment and performance elements.

First and foremost, by the time full production kicks off, the new S60 will be powered by a choice of 5 petrol engines and 3 diesel ones. Still, the first batches of the car will only be available with two petrol engines, 3.0l T6 (304 bhp/440 Nm) and 2.0T (203 bhp/300 Nm) and two diesel – 2.4 D5 (205 bhp/420 Nm) and 2.0 D3 (163 bhp/400 Nm).

Later in the year, Volvo will add the remaining petrol engines, 2.0 T5 (240 bhp/320 Nm), 1.6 T4 (180 bhp/240 Nm) and 1.6 T3 (150 bhp/240 Nm). The remaining diesel unit, the 1.6 D DRIVe (115 bhp/270 Nm) will also join the range later in the year.

According to Volvo, the S60 is the first "sedan model on the market with Advanced Stability Control". ASC allows, thanks to a new roll angle sensor, the Dynamic Stability and Traction Control (DSTC) to be activated faster and with greater precision.

Another new feature in the S60 is the Corner Traction Control, a system which uses torque vectoring to allow the car to take the corners more easily and eliminating, as much as possible, the risk of understeering.

Volvo's Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake, the system which can avoid a collision with a pedestrian at speeds of up to 35 km/h, is also standard on the S60. Another useful gadget, for drivers who don't pay much attention to what they are doing, is the City Safety system, which automatically brakes when detecting a possible collision with the vehicle in front.

Volvo will try and make the entry of the S60 onto the market as smooth as possible and packed the car with all that consumer appealing info-gadgets we are all used to, plus a bit extra.

Volvo's new infotainment system relays info from the audio unit, navigation system, mobile phone on a five-inch or seven-inch color screen. The Premium Sound features a class-D digital 5x130W amplifier with circuits from Sweden's Anaview, Dolby Digital in combination with Dolby Pro Logic II Surround, MultEQ from Audyssey Laboratories and 12 loudspeakers.

Prices for the S60, as you might have guessed, have not been released, but Volvo did announce it plans to sell about 90,000 cars this year, starting early summer 2010.