Why the Volvo S60 and S80 don’t fully hit the Asian market? Why we say so? This is a research purely done by us and it has nothing to do with Volvo or any other statistic. In fact, it is really an interesting research and may be Volvo designer can think of this when designer the new car.

If you are living in Asia (mainly China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Bhutan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, and some other Asian countries with lots of Chinese), you may notice that majority of the rich or whoever can afford a luxury car prefer to go for Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, or some other car brand which has the similar performance and price with the Volvo S60 or Volvo S80. Why?

The Volvo S60 or the Volvo S80 is no doubt a good executive car that fit most of the large family. The price is also reasonable after all the taxes in those countries mentioned above. The S60 was first introduced in year 2000. The performance, durability, and safety are 100% without a doubt that no one would not go for this car. However, it is the design of the rear car that has a little problem with Asian especially Chinese based on our research.

If you notice, the rear view of first generation of the Volvo S60 (2000 to 2009 model year) and Volvo S80 are unfortunately, similar to the traditional coffin of Chinese people. With no offense, but Chinese are one of the most superstition people on the planet and they would not prefer to drive a coffin on the road. Try to look at the rear view of a Volvo S60 on the left and traditional Chinese coffin here on the right.

We have done a research by asking some of the Asian drivers “What do you feel when you look at the back of a Volvo S60?” Most of the answer we get is “coffin”. It is mainly the tail light that makes majority Asian people think like that.

The current second generation Volvo S80 (2006 until present) is still have the feel of Chinese coffin. As for the new generation of Volvo S60 that introduce in May 2010, it is a success. It totally changed the design and this time, we believe it will give a big hit not only to Asian market but whole world.