That’s not to say that Volvo is abandoning the idea of a luxury coupe, and Inside Line reports that Volvo may be working on a larger, more upscale C90 coupe to rival offerings from Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW. If a Volvo C90 is built, expect it to be bigger and pricier than the current C70.
Why go such a premium route? In a word, the answer is profit. Volvo’s Scalable Platform Architecture would allow the C90 to share a platform with the next S80 sedan, reducing development and production costs. Even at a relatively low production volume, a C90 could be profitable if the price were high enough.
Since Volvo is moving towards an all-four-cylinder-engine future, look for power to come from a range of four-cylinder, forced-induction gasoline and diesel engines, with a plug-in-hybrid variant also rumored to be under consideration.
It’s not clear if Volvo would launch the C90 as a coupe, with a separate convertible variant to follow, or as a power retractable hardtop model. The original Volvo C70 debuted in coupe and convertible variants, and didn’t go the powered hardtop route until the second generation model was launched in 2006.