Main reason with Volvo: 1) safety; 2) Quality of build; 3) "personal taste"? - elegant & difference.
Personally, do not like Jap cars, period. Germen cars are good, however, over-priced like BMW & MB except Audi & WV. But Audi/WV has lousy engineering if you do more study and you will know (I am a mechanic engineer).
Go with S60 if you have budget. Who cars Ford owns Volvo. It's still designed/built/tested in Europe with Volvo engineers.