Volvo’s new XC60, the ultimate city car
The safe and smart Volvo XC60
knows when to stop on its own.
Volvo’s bold, brand-new XC60 is targeted at the same kind of people as the Swedish automaker’s previous new model, the cute C30: the microchip generation – young (or young at heart) urban professionals with an active life involving rushing from work to the gym or the tennis courts, then on to a good restaurant or the theater. On the weekend, XC60 owners may well take off for an adventure in the mountains to enjoy hiking or skiing or long bike rides.
The XC60 is considerably larger and more muscular than the C30 of course, and the young urban professionals have matured, probably become part of a steady couple. Perhaps even acquired a child, a dog. And perhaps they are young in spirit now, rather than in actual years.
The XC60 is one of the new crossover vehicles: cars that are fun to drive and comfortable to ride in, combining the best of the SUV with the best of the sedan. This is a growing market segment now that larger gas-guzzlers are, at least for a while, out of favor. Newly desirable vehicles are big enough and sporty enough to make a long journey on the expressway enjoyable and with a competitive edge that gets you there just as fast as you want. Yet they are small and flexible enough to negotiate city lanes and parking lots. And good looking enough that you don’t feel silly driving city streets or parking at the opera house. With the XC60, Volvo expects to pick up around 10 percent of this important new market segment.
Sounds good
As befits the urban, young professional profile, the XC60 comes with about the very best sound system that is commercially available. Volvo is making a name for itself here: if a very good sound system is one of the most important features you look for in a new car, you have to check out Volvo. Handicapped at first by driving on my own, I hadn’t been able to get the best out of the CD player in my test car. I mentioned this to a Volvo staffer and he very kindly gave me a tutorial involving such things as surround sound, woofer equalizers and how to adjust the sound for optimum listening in both front seats, or driver only, or back seat only (if the kids want to listen to their music). He pointed out that the iPod/MP3 connection also takes a USB stick loaded up with your favorite music.
City Safety
The XC60 is a real city car: it’s the safest car ever for city driving. If the driver isn’t paying attention the car will actually stop, all on its own, avoiding the sort of bumps people often have in cities where one vehicle stops so the driver can ask for directions, look in a shop window, or just slow down at traffic lights, and the driver behind isn’t paying attention and boom! Crunch! Before you even know what happened you have two expensively dented vehicles and two angry drivers each blaming the other one. Volvo calls this amazing new invention City Safety.
I tested City Safety recently. It was a truly weird feeling. We were told to drive up behind a stationary vehicle at about 15 mph and – not brake! This was difficult. I had to force myself with a bit of play acting. My mother used to have a very nice neighbor called Mrs. McCulloch. Mrs. McCulloch was a midwife and thus owned a small car. The car was pale powder blue and it was the only car on our street at that time back in 1960s Britain. When she wasn’t delivering babies, Mrs. McCulloch sometimes gave my mother a lift in her car. My brother and I would sit in the back. Mrs. McCulloch was a very nice, friendly woman and she was fond of small children so while she was driving us to the shops or the park, she would frequently turn around to face the back seat to talk to my brother and me. And the car would weave and my mother would have minor, suppressed hysterics.
So I pretended to be Mrs. McCulloch and as I drove along the track toward the stationary car in front on me I forced – forced – myself to turn around to the back seat and speak to the nonexistent passengers trembling in the back seat. And whatdyaknow – the XC60 stopped. All by itself. It came to a halt about 6 inches behind the car in front, which was actually a kind of big air cushion formed into the shape of a car rather than a real car. It was a very strange feeling to have the car breaking under me when I hadn’t done anything. But it was good to know that modern Mrs. McCullochs will be causing fewer minor bumps in the future if they buy cars with this feature.
City Safety Auto Brake helps either avoid or reduce the severity of a collision by automatically braking the car and reducing the throttle opening. The brake lights are activated to warn other traffic.
Later, a fellow auto journalist told me that he had an actual, on-the-street experience involving his test XC60 and two real cars. The car in front of him stopped unexpectedly, his XC60 braked, stopped. Unfortunately the driver behind failed to notice, failed to stop, minor bump. Luckily for my colleague’s nerves, there was no damage done to his test car since it has pretty sturdy bumpers. When he fessed up to Volvo, they just laughed and said, point proven: City Safety works. If your vehicle has it.
Apparently insurance companies are interested, and it is possible that premiums may be reduced for vehicles with such anti-bump features, since a large number of insurance claims are for minor collisions in city driving where nobody gets hurt but the bodywork damage can run astonishingly high. According to Volvo, surveys indicate that 75 percent of all reported collisions take place at speeds of up to 19 mph. In half of these cases the driver has not braked at all before the collision. There may well come a time when all vehicles will have something similar and older people will remember with astonishment the far off days when no one had thought of such an obvious safety feature.
Behind the brakes
How does City Safety work? A laser sensor that is integrated into the top of the windshield senses when vehicles ahead are moving slower or standing still. Based on the distance to the vehicle in front and the car’s own speed, the system makes 50 calculations a second to determine what braking force would be needed to avoid a collision. In a situation where the calculated braking force needed reaches a certain level, and the driver has not reacted, the City Safety function senses that a collision is imminent and acts to avoid it, or at least to diminish the impact.
Safety package includes:
• Driver Alert Control/Lane Departure Warning which notices and informs the driver if he or she is driving in an erratic way, for instance by crossing a lane marking;
• Distance Alert, which warns the driver if he/she is too close to the vehicle in front;
• Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), a camera that helps detect vehicles in the blind spot and triggers a warning light by the side mirror to alert the driver;
• Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which uses radar sensors to continuously monitor the vehicle in front and automatically adjusts speed to maintain a set distance behind the vehicle in front.
Distance Alert: a laser sensor monitors traffic in front and warns the driver when he or she is too close to the vehicle in front.
And of course there are all the usual Volvo safety features: deformation zones of different grades of steel, each one with a certain role in a collision, helping to provide increased protection in a frontal collision. Roll Stability Control (RSC) and Roll-Over Protection System (ROPS) which stabilize the car and reduce the risk of rolling over in an accident, always an issue in higher vehicles.
Volvo says the XC60 is the safest Volvo ever, because it’s the newest Volvo, drawing upon the most up-to-date research from the Volvo safety team.
Extra features
Some nice features of the XC60: first, the panoramic roof, a new variant on the traditional sunroof. The roof is divided into two sections and the extra light gives a airy, spacious feeling. Second, the loading area has a lockable load floor covering two storage areas, one could be for personal items and another for soiled or wet items. Useful if the car is left in a dodgy part of town or a remote country track. And a third: Park Assist Camera (PAC), which shows the driver the rear view on a video screen, as well as the intended course prior to a reversing maneuver.
Yes, you can go off road
A sign of the times: the XC60 is a vehicle that doesn’t boast about its off-road driving capabilities. However the XC60 didn’t come out of nowhere; it shares some features with Land Rover’s LR2 and many more with Volvo’s larger off-road XC70. It has 9 inch ground clearance, the best in its segment. Four-wheel drive is standard as is hill descent control (HDC). Which means that for those of us who still like to drive off-road the XC60 is a very good choice. But Volvo is not making a lot of noise about this, instead preferring to emphasize the XC60’s sleek good looks, its wonderful hi-fi system and its suitability for an urban environment.
The times they are a-changin’ and these days sensitive, thoughtful people don’t like to be seen driving enormous gas-guzzling tanks. How fortunate for us that we can buy a sensitive, urban person’s car like the XC60 that when we want, when the times change, as they will, will be extremely capable of tackling off-road with the best of them.
The XC60 comes in a choice of 13 exterior colors including several shades of black, white, and gray plus red, blue and the new shades Lime Grass Green and Terra Bronze Pearl.
Specifications Volvo XC60
• Turbocharged 3.0-liter high-efficiency in-line six-cylinder gasoline engine producing 281 horsepower and 295 lb.-ft. of torque.
• Six-speed Geartronic transmission, electronically controlled, with
lock-up and winter mode selection, offering drivers the choice of fully automatic or manual shift modes.
• All Wheel Drive (AWD) with Instant TractionTM
• ABS braking system with EBD. The braking system in the Volvo XC60 is based on the system used in the Volvo XC90. The powerful XC90 brakes in combination with the lower weight of the smaller vehicle provide exceptional braking performance.
• Enhanced DSTC (Dynamic Stability and Traction Control) function
• Roll Stability Control (RSC)
• Three chassis settings, Comfort, Advanced and Sport, allow the driver
to adapt the chassis to suit road conditions at the touch of a button.
• Fuel consumption: 11.9 l/100 km (19.8 mpg) CO2: 284g/km