1991 Volvo 940SE Is a Foul-Climate Pal

From the February 1991 issue of Car and Driver.

Jackie Stewart, racing great, high-­pitched telecaster, and practical Scots­man, once told us that he would put any used car he was thinking about buying through a carwash. Why? To see if it leaks, of course. As a corollary to this sound advice, we’ve always felt that driv­ing a car, any car, in a rainstorm will re­veal that car’s capacity to please and com­fort the driver. Rain, and lots of it, fell on us when we took the new Volvo 940 se­ries car on a preview run.

We had the opportunity to drive the new car back to back at Volvo’s high­-speed track in Sweden on the kind of cold, rainy day that doubtless inspired Ingmar Bergman to create the many laugh-riot films he made with his pal Charlie McCarthy. And we’re forced to admit that settling into a warm, welcoming Volvo interior had a tonic effect on us. You might say the 940 both pleased and comforted us.

Volvo’s newest entry in the North American marketplace replaces its top­-rung 760 series introduced here in 1983, and the new line includes, as before, both sedans and wagons. Both body styles are available, reading from bottom to top, as a GLE, a Turbo, and an SE, with base prices ranging from $27,885 to $33,630.

The most apparent change, logically enough, is a newly sculpted exterior on the sedans. The rear end has been thor­oughly overhauled, with a higher deck lid, a rear window that’s been raked more steeply, and more rounded rear fenders. This removes much of the boxlike aspect of the 760 but does nothing to diminish the distinctive Volvo stance, a look that continues to communicate the strength and safety that’s long been Volvo’s spe­cial pride and property.

Appearances aside, the new exterior treatment also delivers a twelve-percent-­lower drag coefficient—helping the 940SE achieve an EPA highway mileage a high as 25 mpg—and less wind noise than we found in its predecessors. On a more practical note, the new design has also resulted in a lower lift-over when fill­ing the large trunk with luggage.

Inside, the seats remain the large, comfortable, heated repositories that larger drivers have come to know and love. Leather is standard on the top-of-the-line SE, optional on the others. The SE’s power adjustments allow you to rap­idly achieve a responsible driving position—or riding position, in the case of the front-seat passenger. A driver’s-side air bag is standard throughout the line. Volvo’s plain-spoken dash treatment, re­strained and readable, keeps the driver fully informed without flash or fuss.

The 940 series uses two engines, both four-cylinders, as are all Volvo engines for ’91. The GLE’s power derives from the B-234F engine, a 2.3-liter sixteen­-valve double-overhead-cam unit that produces a modest but adequate 153 horsepower at 5700 rpm. Peak torque is 150 pound-feet at 4450. The Turbo and the SE use the B-230FT turbocharged and intercooled four-cylinder, a single-over­head-cam engine that develops 162 horsepower at 4000 rpm (4800 in the Turbo) and 195 pound-feet of torque at a low and re­warding 3450 rpm.

All 940s are available only with auto­matic transmissions. The GLE gets the AW-72L, a four-speed with lockup torque converter and a new Automatic Locking Differential, and the other two use the AW-71 four-speed with the new differential. This differential provides the normal function of allowing the wheels to turn at different speeds when the car goes around corners, but will also—at speeds under 25 mph or from a standstill—lock both wheels together if one has somehow lost traction. The ALD’s aim is to make foul-weather driv­ing less frightening.

The suspensions on the three sedans hold no surprises; the GLE and the Tur­bo use struts in front and a live axle in back, positioned by a Panhard rod and four trailing links, two on a rubber-isolat­ed subframe. Both ends have coil springs and anti-roll bars.

The SE has an identical setup in front but has Volvo’s multilink independent rear suspension: each rear wheel is locat­ed by one trailing link, two lateral links, and a trailing arm. Coil springs, self-­leveling shocks, and an anti-roll bar com­plete the rear suspension.

The GLE has 6.0-by-15-inch alloy wheels with 185/65HR-15 tires; the sportier Turbo rides on 6.5-by-16-inch alloys with big 205/55VR-16 tire , and the SE has 6.0-by-15-inch twenty-spoke alloy wheels with 195/60HR-15 tires.

Not surprisingly, the Turbo is the most aggressive handler of the trio, due in large part to the wider wheels and larger tires. None of the three will be mistaken for anything but Volvos, no bad thing where a roomy sedan is concerned. Un­der way, the cars are capable and con­trolled and able to negotiate surfaces rough and smooth, straight and twisting, without incident.

For the kind of high-speed, bad-weath­er driving Europeans so often encounter, the 940 sedans are more at home than most. We can think of a great many sedans that do not respond well to being put on high banking at speeds in the 110-mph range, but Volvos are not among this number. The 940s just keep whis­tling on through the wet, wipers sweep­ing the big windshield, creating their own sunshine.

On a short handling course, the Turbo and the SE were the most fun, the Turbo because of its sportier tires and the SE because of its multilink rear suspension. None of the cars are neck-snappers—or head-turners for that matter—but only the GLE left us feeling the least short-changed in the power-supply category. The other sedans and the Turbo wagon bordered on being fun, which is not to damn them with faint praise . . . remember we are dealing with pillars of establishment cars here, not up­start nickel rockets.

The new 940 lineup will be followed next year by a line of 960s that will be powered by Volvo’s new B-6304F 24-valve, twin-cam 2.9-liter inline-six. We drove this car also, and can say that the engine’s 204 horsepower brought the big sedan to an easy gallop with all the right sensory elements. We were also treated to a run in a 273-hp twin-turbo version of the 960, an engine that may or may not ever see production. The 960 se­ries did not come to the U.S. ahead of or with the 940 series because production had not yet reached maximum output at the engine plant where the replacement for the venerable Peugeot/Renault/Volvo V-6 is being built.

The 940 series, sedan and wagons, will give Volvo a fresh set of foils with which to fend off the growing number of infidels storming the barricades of the $30,000-sedan empire. Oddly, in a world where all too many shapes are similar, Volvo’s staid styling serves to set it apart and may well contribute heavily to the Swedish automaker’s efforts to maintain the solid sales it’s seen in recent times.