When a designer tells us a new interior is coming, usually we just nod. When that designer is Thomas Ingenlath, the designer who determines what ?Volvo? means to our eyeballs, our ears stand up like those of an elkhound that just heard the word ?walk.? Ingenlath is the chief emotion stirrer behind the XC90 and S90, and the striking interiors of those Volvos are only the most recent credits on his impressive résumé.
We?re seated in a glass pod 20 feet above the Los Angeles auto show?s South Hall, in a hyper-Scandinavian expression of a modern show stand. Downstairs, a massive screen displays images of a frigid sea, cloudy skies time-lapsing to clear and back. You can see those blues and grays translated to colors on Volvo?s display cars. Further images of vast forests seem to connect with the abundance of warm wood used in the exhibit and in the cars themselves. While I’m listening to Ingenlath, occasionally my eyes dart around the room. The floor is wood, with contrasting circle inserts in the planks. Plates and a carafe of coffee rest on a textured wood table, with lines and protruding square shapes that give the wooden table stand a 3D matrix effect. Just behind that is a wall made of vertically slanted wood. Something Ingenlath will say in just a few moments will make all of these details distinctly important.
We’re already anticipating many details about Volvo?s new mid-size SUV, which we’ve spied in testing. To be built on a downsized version of th...