Volvo XC60 review

1. Introduction

According to Volvo, the new XC60 is ’the safest car on the market’, and the technology that makes it so represents ‘the dawn of a new era’. Reading the press blurb it certainly seemed that way and I believed the PR spin right up until the point they took us to an empty car park to demonstrate it. I was asked to drive towards an inflatable car at not more than 19mph and let the latest piece of passive big-brother-is-looking-out-for-you equipment, the City Safety braking system, do its business. The idea is that the on-board computer and infrared cameras work in tandem to second-guess a lapse in the driver’s concentration and before the car in front becomes an integral part of the XC60’s paintwork, it slams on the anchors and brings it to an abrupt halt.
So, on a coned off area on the aforementioned car park I pretended a pretty blonde pedestrian had distracted my attention and that the inflatable car in front had, at the same precise moment, braked suddenly to avoid hitting a hedgehog. What was meant to have happened didn’t. There I was, staring at the imaginary blond and instead of coming to a halt, we carried on going, pulverising the bouncy-castle car up ahead. The vehicle didn’t even make the slightest effort to stop. Not just the once did this happen but a total of three times. By the third attempt the flustered Swedish technician sitting next to me – who was becoming more and more embarrassed with each try – decided to blame the previous driver and accused him of turning off the system (even after he re-booted it, it still failed). To prevent anymore Nordic blushes we changed cars and repeated the exercise. This time it worked, extremely well, stopping just millimetres away from the barrage balloon that represented the other vehicle. But it still left me a little unconvinced.

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