First Drive: Volvo V60
Volvo began making estate cars in the Fifties with the Duett and the Sixties it produced the Amazon shooting break, although, for most of us, the subsequent boxy 145 and 245 estates are the quintessence of these strangely-endearing Swedish utilities. My Dad had one, a 245 estate, delivered brand new from Rudd’s of Southampton and resplendent in that sandy beige popular in the early Seventies. Not sexy, but reliable and safe, our Volvo stayed in the family for many years, becoming more like a friend than a mechanical conveyance.
Perhaps we are going to have to change our relationship with cars in this new era of battery-electric vehicles, but somehow I think that the new V60 estate is going to inch its way into our hearts. This is the fifth new Volvo to be based on the company’s scalable platform architecture after the XC90 and XC60 SUVs and the S90 saloon and V90 estate. It’s also going to be one of the best-selling Volvos in the UK, where big Swedish estates are the go-to family transport. With no false modesty, Volvo reckons V60 will take a quarter of the premium family estate market against cars like BMW’s 3-series Touring, Mercedes-Benz’s C-class estate and Audi’s A4 Avant.
To that end the Volvo has the biggest load bed in the class with 529 litres of load space with the seats up and 1,441 litres with them folded. The new car is on sale now, with deliveries in the late autumn, priced between £31,550 to £40,600.
The cabin is large, with very comfortable front and rear seats - it is a Volvo after all - though it takes a bit of fiddling to get a good driving position and the driver’s seat seems a little high.
It’s nicely made, with pleasant-feeling materials and an attractive design that apes that of the other four SPA models, though there are some quite over-the-top fabric and trim combinations. In the centre is the distinctive 9-inch portrait touch screen, which can be configured to show entertainment, phone settings, navigation instructions and heater controls. It replaces a lot of conventional buttons, rather too many in fact and working your way through it is complex and occasionally cumbersome; it takes three button pushes to get the air recirculating function for example and five to adjust the sound controls for the first rate (though expensive) Bower and Wilkins stereo. The rear seats fold 60/40 to give an almost flat load bed, but Volvo still uses a large roller-type load bed cover and with nowhere to store it in the car, that’s likely to be discarded in the back of the garage for eternity.
Safety is the same as that on other big Volvos, so city and high-speed automatic brake activation is standard along with steering mitigation and pedestrian, cyclist and large-animal recognition software. Braking mitigation has been further uprated for the V60 to include a head-on impact function, which brakes hard if it predicts such an awful eventuality.
“These are high-energy crashes, where a quarter of severe injuries and deaths occur,” says Jan Ivarsson, deputy director of safety, “but a 10 – 15km/h speed reduction, if you calculate the energy scrub, makes a big difference on the fate of the passengers.”
And before you ask, no we didn’t experience it in operation.
Not all of it is standard, though, with blind-spot information system including steering assist, cross-traffic alert and rear-collision mitigation costing another £500.
Of the three basic trim packages: Momentum, R-Design and Inscription, the mid-ranking R-Design is likely to be the most popular, but the base model equipment isn’t bad, with cruise control, height-adjustable front seats, DAB radio, LED lamps, park assist, 17-inch wheels, the 12.3-inch driver display and that centre touchscreen. One must-have option is the £700 360-degree parking camera if only for the beautiful graphics.
Volvo recently announced that it wouldn’t launch any more new diesel models, although this was slyly calculated timing since it applies not to this car, which will sell strongly in Europe where diesel sales are important, but to the forthcoming S60 saloon which will sell strongly in North American and far eastern markets where diesel isn’t a big factor. So the UK will initially get two turbodiesels, four-cylinder engines (148bhp D3 and 187bhp D4) and one four-pot petrol (246bhp T5), with a T4 petrol and the T6 plug-in hybrid that will be launched by late this year/early next. Transmissions include the six-speed manual and eight-speed torque-converter automatic. By far the majority of UK sales will be of diesel engines with the 148bhp/236lb ft D3 most popular. The only diesel available to drive, however, was the 187bhp/295lb ft D4 which at not much more than £1,000 extra, with significantly more performance and approximately the same economy and CO2 emissions, makes a good case for itself.
Volvo’s turbodiesel has tended towards the raucous, so it's nice to report that in this big estate it’s more refined than the other SPA cars. It's respectably quick with strong low-down torque so it feels relaxed at speed. The eight-speed auto isn't a great gearbox, though, or at least the shifting strategy isn't and strangely there’s no steering-wheel paddles to allow you to select a higher gear and ride the torque curve rather than let the ‘box change down. For a big 1.7-tonne shooting break, the economy isn’t bad, however, we got 46.3mpg on brisk Spanish A roads.
Volvo says the V60 is the most dynamic of its five sister cars. While air suspension is an option, our test car came with standard steel suspension and a £750 option of adaptive damping. Even in the hardest setting, the body control is terrific, with a gentle flowing ride quality over undulations and a bit of body roll in corners.
Though it’s clearly built for long distance comfort (and safety), the V60 doesn’t just plough straight on when it meets a corner, or shy like a startled horse at a winding road and the driving experience is quite pleasantly agile, with decently progressive and well-weighted steering as long as you don’t select Dynamic Mode, in which it feels plain odd. The brakes are strong and progressive but slightly over-servoed on the first press of the pedal.
The Achilles Heel is the less-than-stellar small-bump absorption even in the softest damper setting in spite of the improved engine mounts on this model. Rippling road surfaces, small holes and concrete expansion joints are fed faithfully back into the cabin via the optional 19-inch Continental tyres and we'd recommend selecting smaller wheels and taller tyres. And while this is above all a family car, if you happen to find yourself alone in the driving seat on a suitable road, in the great tradition of Volvo estates, V60 is better to drive quickly than it has any right to be. Dynamically it's not a patch on its BMW or Mercedes rivals, but it's quite fun. And if you don’t want to drive fast but be driven instead, the Pilot Assist software (upgraded for this model and part of the £1,725 ‘Intellisafe’ pack) makes not a bad fist at driving itself as long as you keep your hands on the wheel. It's still not self-driving, though and you have to pay almost more attention than if you were driving yourself.
Large, rangy and safe, the new V60 is more expensive than the old, but spec for spec, it'll cost about the same, with BIK for the manual diesels of £147 a month and launch-offer PCP and PCH deals of £299 a month - we're still waiting for the full details of Care By Volvo subscription service.
You'd probably need a quick Caterham in the garage for a sating blast every now and again, but as a family troop carrier that prioritizes family safety over everything else, the V60 remains supreme.
The Numbers
Engine: 1,969cc, four-cylinder turbodiesel
Transmission: eight-speed automatic (optional six-speed manual), front wheel drive.
Power 187bhp at 4,250rpm
0-62mph: 7.9sec
Top speed: 137mph
Price £40,600