Fellow designer here, same opinion. The balance between text and icon is off for me. By wanting Volvo to stay within the circle they've created way too much blank space surrounding it. It doesn't feel right and it also looks a bit generic. 

That was my initial reaction, but I thought it might be an illusion owing to the greater visual weight of the upper part with the arrow, so I used a ruler on my screen and found that it is centered. That’s not an excuse, though, as any designer should be aware of the phenomenon and that sometimes things have to be…

It’s absolutely an iconic typeface, and things aren’t automatically better because they’re new or different.

You beat me to it! Just over 3 1/2 inches.

“it’s not like it’s an iconic typeface” sure, to you maybe not

I’m a graphic designer by profession. My aesthetic (as is the aesthetic of most professional designers) is that “less is more.” In this case however, I think “less” might be too less. The jury is out for me until I see it on a car.

This. Look at it at small sizes and the entire arrow becomes a little blob.

I appreciate the nearly 100 years of font consistency. 

Because it was designed by famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who certainly knew what he was doing. It looks understated and still fresh and modern.

Feels weaker. 1960-1999 seems more solid, more genuine.

the Today’s 91-mm wheelbase

I always liked these, I’m a sucker for a subcompact with AWD (Tercel 4WD Wagon FTMFW!) and the styling, lacking a lot of trendy underbite and chrome, ages well.

My dad had one of these GS’ (a 96) - he bought it for pennies with like 65k miles on it - and basically rode it for nearly a decade only doing the odd oil change. The gearbox (which occasionally fussed about going into 2nd gear) finally went out at 99k miles.

NOW, that was after 30k+ miles of warning signs and…

Mercedes publishes their maintenance schedule well pas 120k.

I guess I’ll give you that. I can say that it’s a marvel that VW has been making engines as long as they have and that they’ve made as many as they have and that they still screw up basic stuff like timing tensioners. It’s also a marvel that VW’s are considered reliable in Europe.

Wow, my answer got picked and look at that. The Civic pictured is Midori Green Pearl, just like mine!

This was a good one. The only one I knew about were the Magic Seats in the Honda Fit. That thing really is a miracle of packaging. 

I work at an Audi dealer in Aus and basically any Audi with the 2.0 turbo from about 2009-2013 the people are calling in because the thing is drinking oil. I’ve spoken to VW owners with same engine with same problem. Fix is an 8 grand engine rebuild to replace the piston rings. After 2013 though they seem good.

My V50 gets really stiff at -35 but after a block or two the transmission is easier to shift

Canadian here. Manual transmissions are fine in the cold. My old 07 Fit started at -29C. Not sure how many furlongs of a degree that is in the old F scale, but the battery will freeze long before any working manual transmission will fail.