Buckle up, all you Volvo-driving parents: the staid Swedish car maker is promising you the drive of your life. From this week buyers will be able to go online and take a virtual test-drive of its newest car, which won’t be in showrooms until the end of summer.

It’s called Volvo: The Game, and players can get behind the wheel of the S60 concept car, the futuristic forerunner of the new S60 saloon. The company says it will allow players to test the steering, visibility and acceleration and get close-ups of the interior that are almost as good as the real thing, even though the real thing has yet to be fully built. As well as peering into the future, the game will have virtual cars from the past, including the 850 estate, and allow players to race on specially designed rally tracks around Europe.

Volvo: The Game has been designed by Swedish game maker SimBin, and its launch is a new departure for Volvo, as it drives new customers to its cars. “What makes this different from other driving games is that we have supplied all the design details of the new car that has yet to be built, to SimBin, so that the car people drive is as realistic as we can make it,” says Stefan Elfstrom of Volvo. “The idea is to increase website traffic and highlight what is expected when the car goes on sale. It will also attract a much broader audience — from seven-year-olds who want to play the racing game, to older drivers who are interested in the new car.”

The game can be downloaded at Volvo’s website from Tuesday, and gamers will be able to walk around the 3-D car before climbing inside, change camera angles while on the move to see the interior, and drive the car on a track.

While most driving games are modelled on existing cars, recording their exact dimensions, performance and sound, in order to realistically reproduce the new S60, SimBin had to work with Volvo’s design team. “One of the problems of creating this game is that the car we are using doesn’t have an engine yet,” says Magnus Ling, vice-president of SimBin. “Because it is still a concept, we had little to go on apart from Volvo’s design renderings and sketches. Volvo had to approve everything we did, and it does give a taste of what people can expect.”

It’s not only Volvo turning to digital technology, for as car sales continue to fall, and advertising money shrinks, car companies are increasingly looking at new ways to introduce potential customers to their brand.

Last month Seat launched a free application for the iPhone that allows users to download a virtual test-drive of the Leon Cupra. It uses the motion-sensitive software in the gadget to allow users to control the hot hatch, and players can customise their car to personal taste before choosing between test-drive and race modes for different experiences. The game raced to No 3 in Apple’s free download chart, with 250,000 down­loads in three weeks.

Last year Audi released a similar application for the 2009 A4. Toyota has also recently launched a virtual test-drive for its iQ model via a mini-site attached to the company’s main website. It allows users to choose various tracks to drive on, then feeds them a link to book a real-life test drive.

Popular though these sites are, they are dwarfed by the recent success of a similar system deployed by Tata, the Indian maker of the Nano, which is billed as the world’s cheapest car. The company, which has suffered several setbacks in production of the real car, launched a website in March allowing customers to take a virtual test-drive. Since then it has attracted more than 1.2m users.

Virtual test-driving allows buyers to sound out a vehicle before buying, but clearly there are limits to what it can do. “I don’t think that any virtual experience can replicate the actual experience of driving a car,” says Alex Wells of the Retail Motor Industry Federation, the body that represents the interests of Britain’s car dealerships.

“These tools are going to become increasingly common and they have their uses. For example, they are good for familiarising yourself with the car’s interior or the overall look, but bearing in mind the amount of money people are investing when they buy a new car, I think that 99% of consumers will want to test the car in the metal.”