Volvo Crosses The Universe, Ends Up With A Lincoln
Pull your eyes away from its fussy front-end treatment for one moment, and you’ll find that Volvo’s Concept Universe displays some classically elegant luxury-flagship lines. A long, sculpted hood, a kicked-back coupe-like cabin with powerful haunches and suicide rear doors all add up to an imposing but athletic flagship, with proportions that scream luxury. In fact, having escaped from the clutches of the serial luxury-brand mismanagers at Ford, Volvo appears to have created the Lincoln flagship that everyone has been begging for. Go ahead: compare this Concept Universe to Lincoln’s MKR Concept and tell us which looks like the better Lincoln flagship. Graft a subtle waterfall grille on this bad boy, and China could save Lincoln’s image the way Chinese designers were able to re-capture Buick’s all-American magic with designs like the LaCrosse. As a Volvo, on the other hand, the Concept Universe may be just a tad too ambitious.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Everything on it is nicely done but the front end.... which car am I talking about? Both, the concept Volvo looks like they built the entire car to support a five foot wide sub woofer. The last thing it needs is a waterfall grille, unless someone somewhere has figured out how to do that subtly. And Ford hasn't been doing subtle front end treatments since? The MKR isn't bad either except again for the WTF front end. The interior on the Volvo is very cool, entirely impractical but maybe the design cues can be carried over into the real world of NTSB crash tests and suppliers who only know of three colors, none of which are primary.
Bristol front grill? Not the blatant BMW copy, but the 405