Volvo has an all-new premium coach for Europe, with daring looks that challenge past perceptions of a manufacturer that seemed sometimes to play it safe and conservative. ALAN MILLAR has been to Gothenburg to see the prototypes at close quarters and learn about what makes it different
With the dry ice just beginning to subside to provide his audience with its initial glimpse of the company’s first all-new coach in around 20 years, Volvo Buses president Håkan Agnevall could afford to indulge in some hyperbole about the new 9000 series.
These models, he asserted, are ‘the best coaches ever built’, the products of a four-year development programme driven by passion and a desire to produce visually striking vehicles that cater for passengers’ rising expectations, are completed to new standards of fit and finish, are economical to operate, enhance the safety of their passengers and other road users including pedestrians, and also are a pleasure to drive.
While some might question his ‘best ever’ claim, it is hard to refute his accompanying argument that the new 9000 is ‘the greatest news on coach from Volvo for over 20 years’. His head of Europe, Ulf Magnusson, describes it as ‘the biggest Volvo industrial…
