by Lem Bingley

Painted stealth black and boasting six wheels, this Volvo XC60 pick-up truck has almost as much road presence as Batman’s Tumbler.

While I couldn’t help pausing to photograph the car, it’s actually been carefully customised to enable the opposite. It’s a purpose-built camera car from which to shoot videos of other Volvos.



Up front it has a five-seat interior for transporting crew and their gear, while out back there’s a big, grippy platform for mounting the camera on a tripod, surrounded by a low rail for strapping down gear and clipping on the cameraman’s essential safety harness.

There’s another filming position on the roof of the car, for high-angle shots, while the front wings have been fitted with lashing points for tying down a remote-control camera on the bonnet.



I ran into the big black bruiser while in Gothenburg, testing the latest generation of Volvo’s C30 electric car.

While I loved the look of the camera car I didn’t fancy the cameraman’s job. With all the safety straps he was in no danger of taking a tumble, but he didn’t have much protection from the wind – and it gets chilly in Sweden even in May, especially at motorway speeds. Plus it rained on the poor sod.



I doubt the Volvo camera car is very green – the petrol-powered T6 AWD XC60 on which it may well be based chucks out 249g/km of CO2, and with an extra axle this version is no doubt even worse. But if there’s a more imposing Volvo out there – short of the products of the truck division – I’ve yet to meet it.