Currently reading: Volvo XC40 to spearhead a family of smaller cars to be sold globally
Swedish firm’s boss lays out future plans for '40 series' cars using compact modular architecture; plus hybrid three-cylinder motors in development

Volvo boss Håkan Samuelsson has given more details about the company’s plans to create a family of smaller models around its new compact modular architecture (CMA).

Volvo has revealed its new concepts. View the V40 concept hereand the XC40 concept here.

“The 40 series will be at the heart of the brand,” Samuelsson said at the Geneva motor show, where he also confirmed that he was prioritising building the crossover XC40 first to meet market demand.

The XC40 is expected to appear in 2018 and will be followed by V40 and S40 variants. Samuelsson also confirmed plans to sell these '40 series' models globally – previously small Volvos have been restricted to some markets – with this helping to boost the company’s volumes towards his target of building 800,000 cars a year. That’s a dramatic increase on the 500,000 cars that Volvo built last year.

The new CMA platform is being engineered in Sweden and will underpin all of Volvo’s smaller models as well as those built in China by parent company Geely.

Cars built on it will use both Volvo’s modular four-cylinder and three-cylinder engines, with Samuelsson also confirming that there will be 'Twin Engine' badged hybrids that will combine the three-cylinder motor with electrical assistance. He admits that, in Europe, he expects diesel sales to decline dramatically as new emissions standards come into force, and that he thinks smaller hybrids will replace them on a 1:1 basis.

Samuelsson also reiterated that we can anticipate a range of Polestar-tuned performance models in the near future, admitting that the forthcoming Volvo S90 and S60 were “good candidates”. 

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Mike Duff

Mike Duff
Title: Contributing editor

Mike has been writing about cars for more than 25 years, having defected from radio journalism to follow his passion. He has been a contributor to Autocar since 2004, and is a former editor of the Autocar website. 

Mike joined Autocar full-time in 2007, first as features editor before taking the reins at autocar.co.uk. Being in charge of the video strategy at the time saw him create our long running “will it drift?” series. For which he apologies.

He specialises in adventurous drive stories, many in unlikely places. He once drove to Serbia to visit the Zastava factory, took a £1500 Mercedes W124 E-Class to Berlin to meet some of its taxi siblings and did Scotland’s North Coast 500 in a Porsche Boxster during a winter storm. He also seems to be a hypercar magnet, having driven such exotics as the Koenigsegg One:1, Lamborghini SCV12, Lotus Evija and Pagani Huayra R.

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xxxx 3 March 2016

Timing

They're fighting a rear guard action as the XC40 should be out NOW. The Q3 and X1 both sell well and have been out for years so Volvo should have acted earlier, instead they've let the V40 flounder against the Golf, A3 and Focus etc and it will only slip further for the next 2 years. Can't understand it with their experiences of the XC60 they didn't see the rise of the small SUV coming.