Volvo Cars take Middle Eastern Journalists
To experience driving in utmost difficult climate conditions.

Volvo Middle East organized a winter test drive in kiruna, Sweden to a group of journalists from the Middle East. This tradition started in the 1960s where Volvo Cars started winter-testing its cars in Swedish Lapland way before other manufacturers did. The winter test drive takes place in the most challenging conditions known to drivers that of snow and ice. Customers should be able to rely on Volvo everywhere irrespective of climate and road conditions. Therefore Volvo's cars are tested under the most extreme conditions found on this planet whether it is in Arizona's blisteringly hot desert and in the biting cold of the Arctic north.

Roula Beiruty, marketing manager of Volvo Cars ME said: “We wanted to invite journalists to the test drive in Kiruna to show them that our cars function in the most difficult climates and have the ability to withstand the most difficult environment and ambient temperatures ranging between -40 and +60 degrees C. Extreme winter climate is probably the toughest test to which one can subject a car. The stress on the engine, steering, climate unit and other systems are immense.”
The journalists started test driving the luxurious XC90 to see how this car copes with the snow and mountainous roads. Driving in snow has to be one of the most challenging things to the Middle Eastern motorist because they drive in different conditions, that of the desert. The next day they got to drive the XC70 adventure car and the route took them into Norway and around the stunning fjords. With this came lots of twisting bends, single-track lanes with parking places so they had to rebuild all the confidence as they navigated around.
Also, the journalists were given the ultimate challenge to drive the C30 and S80 around a series of circuits that really did not appear to be too challenging until the journalists realized they were driving over a frozen lake to experience the performance of Volvo cars in icy conditions. What spilled them over the edge was that they had to drive once with the Dynamic Stability and Traction Control on, then another lap with it off.
The winter test driving was amazing. The cars were awesome in their ride and handling and even under controlled emergency stops, the cars did not slip, I felt they were strong and powerful” said one of the journalist.

After experiencing the test drive in Kiruna, the journalists were extremely confident that Volvo is a dependable and reliable car to drive. It is manufactured taking into consideration the latest automotive technologies of comfort, safety and eco-friendly features.

Volvo is determined to build sophisticated and safe cars. Therefore a Volvo consists of about 40 main systems such as the engine, climate unit, seats and so on. These are divided into 400 subsystems such as the starter motor, fan, seat heaters and others. Which in turn consist of a total of about 3000 components - everything from sensors to heating circuits.
In addition to these basic functions, the car also has a long list of attribute requirements to live up to. And it is here that the temperatures come into the picture. A requirement may read something like: "When starting at -20 degrees, it should take a fixed amount of minutes for the windscreen to be demisted", or "When driving at -15 degrees, there should be a certain specified difference in temperature between the head and feet".