Volvo's 180kph limit: Pursuit of safety or Punishment for enthusiasts?

Volvo raised eyebrows by limiting the top speed of their cars to 180kph . These cars are properly powerful, with more torque than a Supercharged Jaguar F Type V6 . Yet now their top speed is slower than some Proton and Perodua's . Is this justified for cars costing well over RM200,00? Lets find out.

How fast is 180kph?

180kph was a speed seen on Saga speedometers back in the mid 80's . Most modern cars with more than 150bhp can easily hit 160kph so another 20kph extra seems like not a big deal.

In actuality you are travelling 50 meters per seconds . Which means it takes slightly above 2 seconds to clear a distance of a football field . At this speed, if you were to blink, you would've travelled 5 meters . Which is more than the full length of an S90 Volvo .

Safe to say then, 180 kph is a very fast speed , and even the smallest mistake could prove to be fatal for anyone and everyone involved.

But I can upgrade to AP Brakes what?

A 1600 odd kg Porsche 911 takes about 120 meters to come to a complete stop from 180kph . That's a car with 6 pot monobloc callipers and carbon ceramic brakes. In fact its the gold standards for braking performance .

Anything else will take at least 1.5 or 2 times the distance to stop , especially with increased weight and reduced braking performance. Imagine how much more distance and time it would take to come to a stop at speeds higher than 180kph?

Is speed a luxury feature?

Yes and no. In any self respecting luxury car, performance should be sufficient. The acceleration and the effortlessness of maintaining a good cruising speed contributes to the ease of driving , and therefore refinement of a car.

But after a certain point though, speed becomes genuinely terrifying . At that point, you n o longer feel pampered but stressed from behind the wheel. Volvo feels that 180kph is the safe speed at which refinement turns into stress .

But for luxury orientated vehicles, going beyond 180kph is frankly pointless and does not undermine its refinement. Or at least that's what Volvo engineers believe.

Where can I do more than 180kph in Malaysia?

Our roads are full of commercial vehicles who pull out with little to no signal , drivers with no lane discipline and hog the overtaking lane, drivers who overtake on the left , or change lanes without checking their mirrors .

Not to mention our highways which have questionable amount of standing water on the tarmac, or with severe dips that can cause violent oscillations . Because of that you can either severely damage your vehicle or worse, crash .

And we haven't spoken about debris on the road . Not something you want to encounter when travelling the length of a football field every 2 seconds .... Also you do realize 180kph is 70kph above the National speed limit right?

But I paid 6 digits for the car?

True, and these cars are capable of hitting speeds well above 180kph . The question is, would you? And even if you could, can you? Not every driver on our roads are as competent as YS Khong or Karamjit Singh .

Volvo has only done this for their luxury cars and SUV's . If there's a strictly performance orientated car from Volvo, then a 180kph limit would seem odd. The raw truth is most of us can't handle the speed . Plus 180kph is a huge limit, with lots of room for driving experience.

Which is why Volvo has set the limit there. They seem to care about their clients . The other luxury brands have seemingly given this possibly fatal liability to its clients . That's like handing a knife to a toddler .

We at Route Hunters Malaysia applaud the move to cap the top speed . We are more interested in the ease of acceleration, and high speed refinement. Which is what a luxury car should provide. Will we find it in a car like the S90? Watch out for this space.