Our eagle-eyed co-worker, Mr PJ Canale, Editor In Chief to Vapors Magazine that shares our office here at Overamerica Towers, thought he smelt something weird while sitting in Hollywood traffic in this morning. He looked left and caught sight of what we believe is a 2010 Volvo XC60 mid-size SUV/CUV all camo’d up. PJ grabbed his handy iPhone and snapped the exclusive photos you see here. According to Mr Canale, the blacked out and taped soft roader looked to be slightly bigger than a BMW X3/Honda CR-V, and smaller than the XC90 it was following, so we’re thinking Audi Q5 competition, if not Mercedes-Benz GLK. Both of which are in line with Volvo’s desire to swim upstream. The reason for that weird smell—this XC60 is a diesel, and not the V6 3.2 liter gas motor, as evidenced by the words “DIESEL ONLY” above the fuel filler — making this mule the one of the first Volvo diesels we’ve seen on this side of the Atlantic. Plus, as it’s a modern diesel, it didn’t actually smell. The engine is most likely the 2.4-liter turbocharged 5-cylinder–aka D5–good for 185 hp and we’ll assume plenty of torque. There will be a slightly weaker diesel (163 hp) as well as the regular petrol plant. Jump to check out PJ’s description of his encounter plus more pics.

“After I started playing paparazzi at the light and taking flicks with my iPhone, a guy got out on the driver side and started coming toward me. But just then the light changed, the cars behind him started honking, [he got back in] and that little XC60 took off like a bat out of hell — these new diesels are fast. “

Sounds plenty good to us. As the XC60 is based on the C30’s design language, it looks pretty good, too.