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Volvo XC60 Road Trip

Time for a road trip: middle of Scotland to the south coast of England using the UK’s thrilling network of motorways and A roads.

If the trip involved crossing Europe, and if I was feeling a little flusher with fuel funds/ my blagging skills were better, then this is the kind of journey where you immediately want to use a GT car. From a Ferrari 550 to Porsche Panamera, there are plenty of entertaining cars to choose for crushing continents, but when negotiating a trip through the UK I just never consider it worthwhile to want to take a large engine petrol car.

When planning a journey like this I always go for something diesel that can go north to south without refuelling, something large and something with comfortable seats. Ticking all the boxes for this journey, the kind people at Volvo gave me a XC60 D4 AWD Automatic R-Design Nav. With a ticket price of £35,490 (this one was £43,450 with options) it’s a pretty reasonably priced family car compared to the aforementioned supercars.

Our XC60 was the AWD model, not the perfect spec for motorway hypermiling but as we discovered later, it was ideal for negotiating muddy fields.

The reason for this journey south was a visit to Goodwood Festival of Speed – in my opinion, the biggest and best motoring event in the UK. Unfortunately for anyone in central Scotland, it’s a 450 mile one way trip (even more if you book your accommodation late and end up staying in Worthing).

XC60 still looks good next to the much newer and more expensive Mercedes GLC
XC60 still looks good next to the much newer and more expensive Mercedes GLC

Anyway, back to the XC60. Looks wise I think it still looks pretty fresh despite having only had a slight face lift since being introduced in 2008. I think we’ll probably get news of a second generation car at the start of next year but until then I don’t think people buying new will be disappointed.

Inside the car is a slightly different story with the dash and infotainment system not quite matching that of the mighty XC90 and just announced S90/V90 models. Seats wise, Volvo are still making some of the best looking and most comfortable in the business with this car sporting R-Design Leather-faced Sports Upholstery for a £500 premium and heated seats as part of a £1,150 winter pack (also including heated windscreen, washer jets and active bending xenon lights).

I know it’s something that plenty of people probably don’t think about as long as they work, but good xenon lights that move with the curves of the road are a great real world addition to modern cars and the ones on this XC60 really helped make country road driving at night a breeze.

The drive down to Goodwood was pretty uneventful save for two things: my co-pilot for the drive had never driven an automatic before and we managed to get to the M25 right at rush hour.

After a bit of left foot braking for the first few miles, learning to use the auto was, as you would expect, no big deal. Dealing with the M25 was however, too much for us mere humans to handle. Thankfully the XC60 sat nav (inc Sensus Navigation as standard) with the addition of the £1,900 driver support pack (Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake, Pedestrian and Cyclist Detection, Adaptive Cruise Control, Distance Alert, Queue Assist, Lane Departure Warning, Driver Alert Control, Active High Beam, Road Sign Information Display and Blind Spot Information System with Cross Traffic Alert ) meant we could let the car do most of the work when stuck in slow motorway traffic and it also took us a handy diversion through Staines when it detected a faster route. This is the first time I’ve had a built in traffic diversion system that I’ve used in the London area and it worked very effectively in keeping the car moving at the busiest time of the day.

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Glad we weren’t in the 911!

When we finally got to Goodwood on the Thursday morning we arrived at the usual bottom field parking area after a night of torrential rain – not great if you forgot to bring willies and also not great if you’re in a low slung sports car like many of the others in the queue to get in. While watching people get towed into the car park by tractors I was feeling very smug in the XC60 which was also wearing decent profile tyres – something you don’t often see on this class of SUV.

As the drive down was mostly motorway miles, it was only when travelling between Goodwood and Worthing for a few days that we really got to test the car on some country roads. As you would expect of a SUV it’s not an entertaining thing to drive and there’s plenty of diving under braking and lots of roll in the corners. Suspension wise it doesn’t really encourage you to push on but surprisingly it does actually sound quite good when you do ring out the engine a bit more. I’ve no idea of there’s some piped sounds going on but either way it works quite well.

Days before heading to Goodwood I had the opportunity to try the XC60 T6 petrol model and having done this I can wholeheartedly encourage you to pick the diesel.  I know that’s sacrilege to petrol heads but it didn’t feel quicker or sound better and your paying more tax and getting lower fuel economy.

On the subject of economy; the difference between going 75 (actually 70 when using GPS) and 65 was about 10MPG! I guess this might partly be down to size, aerodynamics and the AWD system but that did surprise me a little.

Overall I think the XC60 is probably the pick of the current Volvo line-up to do a trip like this…..until the V90 goes on sale.

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