June 2026 MVS Newsletter

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VOLVO NEWS

In a shocking move, the US administration shuts down Polestar in the United States(!). Polestar and Volvo are joined at the hip and both owned by Chinese parent Geely. Polestar got banned over connected car/data concerns, while Volvo escaped doom with administration approval. It could have been much worse for Volvo. More about the end of Polestar in the US here: Polestar booted from US.

How this will affect Volvo is not immediately clear, but Polestar and Volvo do share a factory in  Ridgeville, South Carolina, where the Polestar 3 is manufactured alongside the EX90, so the effect will be greater than zero.When the 2026 Polestar 3 cars are sold, Polestar dealers will wind down to service centers only. This follows the previous shocking US-market Volvo news when the EX30 was terminated after less than two years: Volvo Discontinues EX30 After Just 2 Years.

VOLVO WAGONS, WE HARDLY KNEW YA

If you want a new Volvo wagon, you’d better get busy. 2026 is the final model year for the remaining Volvo wagons, including the V60 Cross Country and V90 Cross Country. V90 production largely ended in 2025. V60 Cross Country production ended circa April 2026 in the U.S. Volvo is discontinuing wagons to focus on higher-volume SUVs and crossovers, as customer demand has shifted strongly toward those body styles.  Was any carmaker more wagon-centric than Volvo? I can’t think of any that came close.

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UNHINGED RANT OF THE MONTH™

Stop the music, put the kids to bed, dim the lights, put out the trash, put on the sunglasses, lock the doors, feed the cat, get the vodka, and close the blinds. It’s time for Unhinged Rant of the Month™.

All cars are monochrome now. When I say cars I mean cars, pickups, and SUVs, because they’re all the same thing as what we drove in the 1980s which we called at that time, strangely, “cars”. 

I like brevity and it bugs me that people are now forced to say “cars and SUVs” to mean “automobiles Americans drive”. Stop it. It’s all the same, they’re all cars. (Only now they’re all supersized… double the weight and tire size, and quadruple the cost.) 

Back then we didn’t say “cars and station wagons” even though those were technically dissimilar. The station wagon was exactly today’s SUV in function. 

SUVs – “sport utility vehicles” – are just supersized cars. And there’s not a thing “sport” about them by the way, not in any sense in any universe, and especially there is no “sport” how they are used.  

They get people to work and back, which is possibly the most mundane, non-sport act any machine has been forced to perform by humans since machines rolled into humans’ lives at the dawn of the industrial revolution. A dinner plate has more sport in it than an SUV. 

Pickups now are simply the replacement for sports cars. In 1986 a young guy wanted a 280ZX. Now he wants a Tundra. Same age, same buying power, different cultural zeitgeist. “But Matthew,” you shout, “they do different things!” Like what? If you’d say the Tundra costs him twice as much for new tires, then yes they are different machines in that respect. Otherwise, the two get the young man to work. Then they get him to the gym, then to the grocery store, then back to work the next morning, then… 

He might use the money he saves on not getting speeding tickets in the Z he didn’t buy to help pay for the Tundra’s tires. That’s a difference. 

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled rant. I mentioned that all cars are monochrome to my son while we were driving about a month ago. He watched traffic for 30 seconds or so and was astonished that it was true. I told him about the 1980s and 90s cars’ colors: red, yellow, green, indigo, teal, blue. Between ~1993 and 2000 I’d guess a full 20% of cars sold in the US were teal, and another 20% red.

Any time I’m out I can count ten monochrome cars in a row without any difficulty. I’m not looking around to cherry pick them. I’m saying there will be ten in a row, contiguous, in a lane or at a stoplight. XC90 available colors in 2026: Even the XC90 colors with color don’t have all that much color. Look around next time you’re on the road. You’ll see it too. Black, grey, black, white, white, grey, black. Endless columns of monochrome SUVs. Sports cars are gone; color has gone. 

Have we become soulless car ghouls? Does this choice in paint say something about us, some latent psychology? Is it related to the color draining out of McDonalds restaurants? Have you noticed that?

Help me understand this trend, comment here.

QOTM

“No matter which old car you will buy it will cost money and time.”

So true, so true. Quote by Vova585, pulled from Learning and Diving into Volvo, and maybe hunting for my own!

POTM

Photo by rolsen11 pulled from his thread about his S60R, mentioned above, showing his R’s coveted factory Atacama/Spaceball combination

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