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Volvo XC60 Crossover

Author	Riyad Emeran
Published	19th Nov 2008

19 comments

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Over the years I've given TrustedReviews a pretty broad remit, with the site covering many areas of technology from PC components, to MP3 players, to TVs, to mobile phones etc. TR also covers a large amount of technology that's used in the car - gear like satellite navigation, FM transmitters and Bluetooth hands free kits - and with the amount of technology squeezed into cars increasing all the time, I felt that it was time to expand on our automotive coverage. As such, I decided that TR should begin to cover cars themselves, and all the technology that's built into them, rather than just third party devices.

Rather fortuitously, while I was considering this expansion of TR's content, I received an invitation to a launch event for the new Volvo XC60. This was lucky for a couple of reasons - first and foremost, it gave me something new and exciting to kick things off with, and second, Volvo has stuffed the XC60 full of technology that makes it a perfect fit for TrustedReviews. Obviously there's more to the XC60 than the technological toys inside it, but my main focus will be on that technology. That said, it's still important to give you some background data on the car first.

The XC60 falls into the Crossover category, which means that it's a four wheel drive vehicle, but it looks more like a car than a full-on SUV. Looks wise, the XC60 is pretty successful, and it's a million miles away from the square and boxy cars of yore that many still associate with Volvo. In fact the rake of the windscreen and sloping bonnet wouldn't look out of place on a coupe, let alone a 4WD crossover. The good looks continue inside, with a modern and bright cockpit, that's focused towards the driver. There are a lot of toys scattered around the centre console, steering wheel and dash, but I'll come to all that later.

Volvo is offering the XC60 with three engine variants - two five cylinder diesel units and one straight six petrol engine. The Diesel 2.4D and the Diesel D5 produce 163ps and 185ps respectively, while the petrol engine turns out a very healthy (well not environmentally healthy obviously) 285ps. Unsurprisingly, Volvo expects the vast majority of XC60s sold to be diesel versions.

But the big news with the XC60 isn't the choice of engines, or even the fetching design. You see the XC60 has a rather interesting party piece that's sure to enhance Volvo's already solid (pun intended) reputation for safety…

Latest 4 of 19 Comments

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Matthew Hunt said on 19th November 2008

Interesting piece but I do hope this is an exception rather than a rule, I read Trusted Reviews for the tech not car reviews. I appreciate that the Volvo contains some clever techn... more

Riyad said on 20th November 2008

Thanks guys!

I’ve been out of the office these past two days, and I purposely didn’t check these comments because I wanted to see what everyone had to say. I expected there to be some strong views on this one, and whether TR should be moving in this direction. As with anything, you never know if it’s the right thing to do until you try it and see what happens. So that’s what we did.

I think that it’s important to remember that when I started TR it was very IT focussed, and there wasn’t a TV, camcorder or mobile phone in sight. All those things came with time, as I decided to diversify away from PCs and their related components, into consumer electronics. Obviously I haven’t forgotten about the IT side of things, and I think it’s as important today to be reporting on new tech from the likes of Intel, AMD and nVidia as it was back in 2003.

The idea of covering cars, or more to the point, the technology built into them, is something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, but haven’t had a chance to experiment with until now. Obviously if we’re covering this kind of thing, we’re not going to ignore the elephant in the room - the subject is, after all, a car. Therefore, even though the focus is on the technology, we still have to at least mention the range, and what variants are available, otherwise even if you’re won over by the clever tech, you’ve got no idea if the car itself fits into your criteria.

@Martin Daler - You’re right, I specifically didn’t spend any time talking about how the car turned in, or whether there was excessive body roll, or anything else to do with dynamic handling, since that’s not the angle I’m after. Don’t get me wrong, I could easily write pages about a car’s dynamics and its raw performance, but I’ll wait until I launch a dedicated car review site for that :)

@Garfee - Funny you should mention washing machines and microwaves, because white goods is another idea that’s been floating around, and one that I think would work very well in the TR model. Having recently been through the hell of having a new kitchen installed, I’m well aware of the fact that it’s almost impossible to find reviews of various kitchen appliances.

And yes, City Safety tech is standard on the XC60.

@Ben - as for doing things properly, it’s a learning process, and it will take time to get things exactly as we’d want them to be. It’s also worth remembering that this piece is a feature based on a launch event and NOT a review - hence there are no scores! Anyone who’s read TR for a while now will know that we do not write a review of something until we’ve had a full production, review sample delivered to us. Then we can spend enough time with the product to write an evaluative assessment and give said product an overall score.

Whether we’ll ever score something like a car is difficult to say though, since we’re really only concerned with one aspect of the whole. Like Martin, I’d like to know if a £2,000 sat-nav option is any better than a £150 TomTom, and if we had a car in for a proper review, that’s exactly the kind of question we’d be able to answer.

One of the reasons I chose the name TrustedReviews in the first place was that it allowed us to diversify - hence we didn’t have PC or IT or anything else similar in the name, even though that was the main focus at launch. What TR will be covering in a year, two years or five years, is anyone’s guess. But as Martin said, TR won’t just keep doing what it did yesterday.

Thanks guys!

I’ve been out of the office these past two days, and I purposely didn’t check these comments because I wanted to see what everyone had to say. I expecte... more

Mark*W said on 20th November 2008

@Riyad - I get it. As someone who is looking for a new car at the moment, most of the car magazines don't cover the technology that is increasingly part of the cars. And it&... more

Riyad said on 21st November 2008

@Mark - As I said, this wasn't a review as such, more a report from the launch event where I tried to cover enough about the car and the tech inside it to make it relatively i... more

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