Our car, laden with extras, would be sold within 10% of its purchase price after 10,000 miles and would command a part-exchange value of £55k. This is a highly desirable car – reflected in strong residual values. Much better to breathe deep, enjoy that feelgood cabin and sit back in those fabulously comfy seats. Dynamic feels wrong in a car like this (it suits a relaxed gait, not a hard charge) and the Eco setting introduces a degree of fuzzy slush to proceedings. We left our car’s drive mode in Comfort 24/7.
I still missed a six-cylinder engine choice, the compulsory 2.0-litre four-pot growling and grumbling under load a little too much for my liking. But the XC90 is a lovely car to drive and waft around in. It’s telling that we spend more and more time assessing cars’ electronic dynamics above the handling kind.
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The £1500 Intellisafe Pro pack brought adaptive cruise control and all manner of autonomous features it actually drove itself most of the way to Norfolk once with hardly any steering input at all – fiendishly clever stuff, but we still don’t trust such systems. We loved the simple, easy-to-read digital instruments. It beamed up album artwork and callers’ faces. The rest of the car’s digital architecture is spot-on, though.
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The mapping, in particular, is not a patch on the Germans’, whose navs set the benchmark for clarity and ease of use. Having spent more than half a year with the car, I eventually clicked with the infotainment system, but believe it will mature in to a better product in future. There are no hard or soft buttons, meaning you swipe, press and pinch your way around every navigation menu – with occasionally frustrating results. It’s a portrait-orientated touchscreen and worked well enough, but feels a little bit v1.0 compared with rivals’ systems. Like most of the Volvo XC90’s systems, you operate this through the Sensus display. With 19 speakers, kevlar composite cones and ‘tweeter-on-top’ tech to avoid acoustic reflections around the echoingly large cabin, the sound is rich, crisp and pure whether you choose the Studio, Individual or Gothenburg Concert Hall settings. Special mention to the ludicrously over-specified stereo, Bowers & Wilkins’ first in an SUV.
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Many other options fitted to our car were similarly extravagant: £400 for an illuminated tailgate scuff plate? And £275 for the Family Pack’s electro-pop-down rear headrests? Who needs this stuff? Head to our website’s Reviews section to see a full breakdown of how we’d spec our dream XC90. It’s hard to justify spending £1270 on that, despite the ability to programme the cabin to a predetermined warmth. Mind you, it rendered the luxurious auxiliary oil-fired heater obsolete. The £575 Winter Pack is great if you live in frosty climes – with toasty heated seats, wheel and windscreen, reducing front-window scrapery to sub-zero. Optional 21-inch wheels (£1450) looked great but we’d shrink the rims if we were speccing our own from scratch, to the benefit of ride comfort and replacement costs. We averaged 32mpg, with occasional forays into the high 20s.
The D5 is still the model to choose as detailed in our earlier report (published on .uk), the cost/power/thrift/tax argument isn’t so convincing on the T6 petrol and T8 Twin Engine alternatives.
What else would we change? Not a huge amount, to be honest. We loved the paintwork, by the way Twilight Bronze looked mega in the metal and in pictures. Nothing went wrong mechanically and our test ended before we had a chance to sample the dealer network. That was a rare blip in an otherwise faultless spell at CAR. Only the absurdly stained blond leather let the side down (they left a delicate shade of Levis blue). Materials used throughout are first-rate with a stylish mix of metallics, leather and smart plastics, and the interior felt as solidly made and luxurious as the miles ticked towards five figures as it did on day one. The XC90’s crowning achievement is the bit you’ll notice everyday – the cool, minimalist interior.
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