The IT Nerd

The Volvo S60 T6 R-Design Platinum has a very good interior that you will love to spend lots of time in. Let me hit the highlights:

The driver’s seat is one of the best I’ve been in. It held me in place during spirited driving and it is highly adjustable (8 way adjustable… Though it feels like it has way more adjustability than that) including having knee bolstering for comfort during long drives. Put in the time to adjust the seat to suit you and you will never complain about long drives again. The seat also has three memory settings so that once you have that perfect position, you can make sure it’s always available. The front seats are heated.

The back seats are good places to be as well. Two people will fit. Perhaps three if they’re all friendly. As a note, I can “sit behind myself” and still have decent legroom. That’s great as I’m 6 feet tall and I have very long legs. That makes sitting behind me problematic in some cars. Bonus points to Volvo for putting in a switch that automatically flips down the outboard headrests from the drivers seat. You’ll have to do the center one by climbing back there. But I can live with that. I should also note that the rear seats are heated.

People in the rear seat will appreciate the fact that the Volvo put rear HVAC vents on the B-Pillar rather than the floor where they are on most cars. That means your feet and legs won’t get frigid or roasted.

Cupholders are important in a car if you’re North American. You have to be able to put your Big Gulp or your Venti coffee in them or there’s going to be a problem. The front of the car only has two of them, but as you can see, they will hold big drinks. It should also be noted that there is a sliding door that can cover the upholders along with accent lighting. You can’t see it in this picture, but there’s also a 12v outlet between the two cupholders.

The back has two cupholders for the back seats as well along with a storage area. Plus this doubles as the area for a ski pass thru. More on that in a second.

Here you can see the center console which is called the “Floating Console” for reasons you’ll see below. It controls HVAC and the infotainment system. Above the center console is the 7″ display which by the way is NOT a touch screen display. I should note that all these buttons fall easily to hand from the drivers seat. More on this in part 4.

This is Volvo’s signature “Floating Console” from the side. You’ll see that there’s a space that you could slide gloves or your phone into.

Behind the cupholders is a rather deep storage area that has a USB port and a 1/8″ audio jack.

The glove box is of decent size. It’s also lit, which is handy at night, and it’s lockable.

Here’s the R-Design steering wheel. It is leather wrapped and I must admit that it feels outstanding in my hands and it never felt slippery at any point of my driving experience. The buttons on the left control the cruise control and related items. The right side controls the infotainment system. Also, note the gauge cluster. The blue really makes it look cool does it not? If you think the gauge cluster look cool now…

….Just look at them in low light. The center of each gauge can be customized to display all sorts of useful info. More on that in part 4 of this review.

This is the Start/Stop button with a space below it for the key fob. You don’t need to put the keyfob in there even though I did for this photo. Simply having it on your person is enough to unlock the car and start it.

To the lower left left of the steering wheel, you’ll see (from top left) controls for the dash lighting, exterior lights, the remote fuel door release, trunk release and at the bottom the parking brake which is electronic.

All the door locks, window and side mirror controls are on the door. The chrome on the door is a nice touch.

You get metal sport pedals. They look cool and my shoes never slipped on them.

Next to the window inside the door is the light for the blind spot monitor. Points to Volvo for putting it inside the vehicle as it’s in my line of sight on the left side. That means that I am always aware of what is around me as opposed to putting it on the mirrors themselves which make them only useful when I am looking to change lanes.

You get a good sized moonroof. It has one trick that I like….

This is the sunshade for the moonroof. If you look at the top of this picture, you’ll see vents. Thus you can keep the sunshade closed and crack open the sunroof to get air into the car. Nice touch!

The trunk is absolutely HUGE. It will swallow anything. Trips to Ikea will never be the same.

If you look at the top of this picture, you’ll see the release levers to drop the seats. You get 60/40 split seating for long items. Plus in the center, you get a ski pass through.

Here’s a close look at the ski pass through. Note the release switch at the top. To get to it, you either have to drop the right side of the seats, open the pass through and put the seats back up (which is what the manual recommends), or dive into the trunk to get to it (which is what some males owners will try because they won’t recall what was suggested in that part of the owners manual…. Assuming they read it at all). Volvo might want to come up with a way to open the pass though from inside the car without dropping the seats.

Under the floor of the trunk you discover that there’s no spare. Instead, you get a sealant kit. The upshot is that by not having a spare tire you save weight. Thus the car gets better fuel economy.

Notes:

• The visibility is great. I can see in any direction very well. Combined with properly adjusted mirrors, there should never be any reason why you can’t see what’s around you.
• Headroom is decent with the moonroof. Though I did have to spend a lot of time adjusting my seating my position to get into a position where I didn’t feel like I was about to hit the roof. I will note that I did bump my head getting in and out of the car because of the design of the roofline at first. But the more I did it, the less I bumped my head. Now it doesn’t happen at all.
• There’s a dead pedal and it’s made of a rubber like material that has come cushioning from what I can tell. Volvo gets points for including it. But if Volvo wants some style points, a dead pedal that is made of the same material of the brake and gas pedals could be substituted for that. It would look cool in my opinion.
• The leather is nice and soft. It’s got quality stitching and I think it will last for years if you take care of it.
• All the surfaces have some sort of low gloss soft touch material. It feels like it will stand up over time.
• The build quality of the interior is top notch. No gaps, no rattles, nothing that could be considered a negative was found during my examination of it.

For the most part, the interior is a great place to live. It is well put together and it’s a great place to take a long drive in. It oozes quality from every aspect and is well executed for the most part. I’m still impressed.

In part 4 of the review I’ll look at the technology in the Volvo, and there’s a lot of it.

This entry was posted on July 24, 2013 at 8:29 am and is filed under Products with tags Volvo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.