The IT Nerd

So I’ve come to the end of this review. What are my final thoughts? I thought the XC60 was a perfect sized SUV for people like myself and my wife. It holds four to five adults, it has lots of power on tap thanks to the Polestar upgrades, and plenty of safety features. My final fuel economy was 11.2 L/100 KM which is pretty good given that this is an SUV that I drove in stop and go traffic and on the highway. Complaints? I really don’t have any. I’ve documented some areas where Volvo might want to make improvements during this review, but all of that was very minor in nature. Overall, this is a great vehicle and I really enjoyed driving it.

What is all this safety and technology going to cost you? Well, the particular XC60 T6 AWD Platinum variant had a lot of option boxes checked. Thus it came up to a grand total of $57,845. But if you want something at a lower price point, the XC60 starts at just under $40,000 with FWD and a 3.2 L V6 under the hood and $47,950 with the turbo 6 cylinder engine under the hood and AWD.

Trust me, take the latter. You’ll thank me for it.

How does that stack up to the competition? One competitor is the Acura RDX. While it does come in at a much lower price point, it has less horsepower, less torque, and an AWD system that isn’t nearly as capable as the one found in the XC60. Also their safety tech isn’t in the same league as the XC60. Another is the Mercedes Benz GLK350. You’ll save a bit of money and you get a SUV that’s in line with the XC60 terms of power and torque…. if you compare it to the XC60 with the non-Polestar enhanced engine. Also their safety tech is closer to that found in the XC60 and the 4Matic AWD system used in the GLK350 is on par with the XC60.

However, neither the RDX or the GLK350 will stop itself if a child runs out in front of you on a city street and you don’t react quick enough.

What you’re paying for by going for the Volvo XC60 is the cutting edge safety. Once you’ve experienced the sort of safety that this or any Volvo model, it makes it hard to go back to any vehicle that doesn’t have it. While that’s Volvo’s ace in the hole, the other thing I should mention is that you’re paying for a well thought out, well executed vehicle. That’s evident from how you can unlock and start the XC60 without touching the key fob, to being able to introduce extra cargo space by folding the front seat forward. Those are things that you’ll also appreciate. If you’re in the market for a mid sized SUV and you’re going to be spending around $60,000, take a trip to your local Volvo dealer and test drive an XC60. Plus have them demo City Safety for you and take some time to look it over in detail. I truly think you’ll be putting your hard earned money down for one.

This entry was posted on October 18, 2013 at 8:23 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.