With no coolant, the temperature gauge did not register an overheat condition (the sensor needs to be immersed in coolant in order to work).
Is it just me or does that sound like a really chimpy design error? There's really no sensor, even perhaps just for the ECU's benefit not yours, that can detect sudden coolant loss and shut down the engine? I hope these people don't also design nuclear reactors.
Yes it is. That's a very common design "flaw" in (at least) older engines. They are usually screwed into the motor somewhere so there's some amount of thermal conductivity but it's going to have significant delay from the true block/head temperature.
My M3 also has an oil temperature guage which is the one you look at rather than the coolant temperature guage. Although it probably suffers a similar problem if you drop all your oil somehow. At least then the oil pressure light should show up, so there's some redundancy built in there. However, oil temperature is rarely displayed to the driver (possibly monitored though allowing a check engine light) in a regular car. It also has a coolant low sensor which is not as rare. It monitors the overflow tank so once that's empty it's a fair bet something is going wrong.
So for a 2000ish Volvo, I'd be surprised, but for 80s/90s motor or earlier, not surprising at all.
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