   2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Jacob Black
I’ll admit this one up front – I adore Volvo styling. I love the accentuated shoulders and hips, I love the headlights, I love the grille. I love the ice-white colouring. I even love the Prince-esque “male symbol” logo.
Like many of my colleagues, I also love the seats; comfortable, soft, supportive, leather hugs that take my Napoleon-complex road manners and bury them under a blanket of quiet, eerie calm.
There is something serene about a Volvo S60 even when you look at it from the outside. For a high-strung person like me, the S60 is an oasis. We’re like Paula Abdul and that funky cartoon cat dude – opposites attract.
Inside, the Volvo is easy to use, with every button, lever, switch and dial within effortless reach. The centre stack floats out into the cabin and tilts towards the driver. It is dominated by a compact set of small buttons centred around a number pad and a silhouette of a seated human. That silhouette is a set of three buttons which control the direction of airflow, it’s a rare nod to form over function (a simple, single button would have done) that humanises the cabin and provides a delightful highlight. My daughter adored it.
The buttons in the main cluster are small, but well set out, well-defined and have great haptics. These buttons are really just shortcut keys. Four rotary dials make the automatic climate control, radio, navigation and MMI simple to control and explore via the main menus if you enjoy going the long way.
There is also a full suite of steering-wheel mounted controls.
The shift lever is a stunner too, with chrome ringed-piano black adorning the ergonomic shape. In this tester Volvo had fitted dark, glossy woodgrain to the stack and door panels, but I prefer the brushed aluminum inlay which is also available.
I love having a proper number pad in the centre stack. It not only makes tuning the radio easy, but makes inputting an address in the nav simple, and allows you to telephone your bank (while parked at the service station of course) and enter all your codes etc without taking your phone out of your pocket. Those of us who used mobile phones before smartphones will be used to the lettering system also attached to the number pad, and typing in addresses to the nav is a breeze.
If the Volvo wasn’t such a nanny, I bet I could even do it without looking, while in motion. Sadly (or luckily) Volvo sees fit to protect me from myself.
   2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
The instrument cluster has three themes, a vivid red one named Performance, a greenish-white one called Eco and a bluish-white one called Elegance. Those themes also change which information is stored by default in the digital displays either side of the large central speedometer. In Elegance, those two displays show rpm and engine temperature. Two smaller inserts at the bottom of those can show other trip-related information including fuel economy and average speed. On the far outboard of the instrument cluster is a fuel gauge (left) and a gear indicator (right). There was exactly the right amount of information there and it was all easy to read.
It wasn’t hard for me to see why this interior received a Ward’s “10 Best Interiors” listing in 2011.
The only thing I didn’t like about the interior was the lighting. The front reading lights have a gorgeous U-shaped surround that looks like it houses a sexy set of LEDs, but instead just two old-school dome lights shine out from behind the promising-looking panel. Lame.
    2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
That and the tiny boot. Volvo has a really neat shopping-control system that pops up and allows one to hold one’s shopping in place. But that system is embedded in a false floor that takes about three inches of height out of the boot and prevented me from loading up my daughter’s Radio Flyer wagon. As a reference, the same wagon fits into a Jetta and a TSX trunk.
Oh, and the lack of proper cabin storage. There is a nice little shelf behind the floating console, but the angle of the centre stack means it’s really only usable for the passenger. The console bin isn’t very deep, and the door pockets are small. None of those were enough to turn me off though.
The speedo sports some neat tricks, including an image of the current speed limit, a red dot next to the current speed limit on the speedo dial, and highlights on the outside when the cruise control is set.
The S60 reads street signs via one of the three instruments housed in the top-centre of the windscreen. The number it reads is the one displayed on the dashboard. It’s not perfect – I drove 15 km out of my garage and down the QEW before it stopped showing me “10 km/h” as the limit. (10 km/h is the speed limit inside our parking lot). But, it works most of the time, and I liked having a rough guide to work with.
   2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
There is no shortage of gadgets hiding in plain sight on the Volvo if you go looking. Three cameras and sensors in the windscreen control the City Safety and Pedestrian & Cyclist Detection with Full Auto Brake systems, while a separate radar unit hidden in the grille controls the adaptive cruise control. It can be set to a variety of distances and will maintain distance all the way to a full stop. I used mine in peak-hour highway traffic and never once touched the pedals for 18 km. It also works at red lights (if there is a car in front of you), but I found I had to use the throttle to take off again once I’d come to a complete stop. The car will do it by itself if you allow it, but it was too slow and annoyed people behind me. The adaptive cruise control can be set to maintain as much as 150 m, so I was never in any danger of the system failing before I had time to react.
   2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
City Safety includes a head-up display of LED lights which warn when you are too close to the car in front, and when you’re about to hit it.
“City Safety uses camera and radar-based technology to determine whether you are approaching a vehicle too quickly. It provides a visual and audible warning to the driver and will even pre-charge and apply the brakes in order to minimize the severity of a collision, or avoid it entirely. A recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study found that among all of the modern technology innovations to help drivers avoid a crash, Volvo’s City Safety stood out among the rest in preventing collisions, injuries and insurance costs.” This is the working explanation and a bit of gloating from the Volvo PR release.
The PR copy also explains Pedestrian & Cyclist Detection with Full Auto Brake. “Introduced as a ‘world-first’ in the 2011 Volvo S60, Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake utilizes radar and camera-based technology to monitor the movements of vehicles and pedestrians in front of the vehicle. If the system recognizes a collision is about to occur, a visual and audible warning will sound, alerting the driver of the pending situation. If the driver does not react to the warning and fails to initiate braking or steering inputs, the car will automatically brake with full force moments before the collision becomes unavoidable.”
I wasn’t game to try either system, but I was given a carpark demonstration using bollards and it worked perfectly. Volvo also offers lane monitoring, but it is only an audible warning of an impending lane departure – there is no visual accompaniment nor will it actively adjust the steering wheel. The likes of Ford and Audi with their active lane-keeping systems have Volvo trumped there.
New for 2014, Volvo has moved to a radar-based Blind-Spot assistance system. The previous camera-based system was unreliable in low-light, rain and other conditions. This radar-based approach is more reliable, and allowed Volvo to give cross-path detection to the S60. That system alerts a driver to crossing traffic if he/she is about to back out into it – handy in a busy shopping-centre carpark.
Last, and probably most enjoyably, in this list of tech features is the all-wheel-drive system with instant traction and torque vectoring. The result is an S60 that turns sharply into a corner and maintains a tight trajectory right through to the finish – even with a lead-footed driver at the helm. The grip and traction offered by this car was impressive on everything from highway off-ramps to tight and narrow road-work slaloms.
This tester was an early-production model and was missing the standard 18-inch wheels; instead I had to make do with the 17s, which detracted slightly from the overall look. I’d be interested to see what the larger wheels do to the road holding, but overall the S60 was balanced and poised. I can’t see larger wheels hurting it.
   2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD. Click image to enlarge |
The 3.0L I6 turbo puts out a healthy 300 hp at 5,600 rpm and 325 lb-ft of torque is on tap from 2,100, all pushed through a six-speed automatic with flappy paddles and a Haldex AWD system. The shifts were slick enough and in moderate driving completely imperceptible. They weren’t as fast as some in flappy-paddle mode, but did supply the requested gear anytime I asked. The S60 surges forward with a growl from the lights and will get the 1,600 kg car from 0-100 km/h in a claimed 5.9 seconds. There is a Polestar upgrade available which boosts power to 325 hp and torque to 354 lb-ft. Sadly, all that power comes at a price. Even without the Polestar upgrade, I could only achieve 12.2 L/100 km in the S60. The EPA rates it at 13.0/9.4/11.2 L/100 km city/highway/combined, so my 12.2 is within range. I was damaged by one four-passenger trip from Toronto to Niagara Falls and back (we were all very comfortable), but still my week was mostly highway cruising so I think that 12.2 is a bit of a rough deal. At least it runs on regular!
The fuel bill aside, I enjoyed driving the Volvo immensely. It was fun when I wanted it to be, everything was easy to use and my commutes were the easiest and most stress-free of any I can remember. Plus with the heated steering-wheel, mirrors, seats and windscreens (front and rear), I was able to successfully weather a brief cold snap without succumbing to frost-bite.
I’ll miss the S60, and my little climate-control-button-man friend; I named him George.
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Pricing: 2014 Volvo S60 T6 AWD Platinum
Base Price (S60 T5): $39,750
Base Price (S60 T6 AWD Platinum): $52,100
Options: Climate Package (heated rear seats, heated windshield, steering wheel) – $1,350, Technology Package (adaptive cruise, collision warning with full auto brake, City Safety, pedestrian and cyclist detection with full auto brake, road sign information, active high beams, lane departure warning, driver alert control) – $1,500, Blind Spot Information System (BLIS): $1,000, Active Dual Xenon Headlights with headlight washers: $1,000, Urbane Wood Inlays: $400
Freight and PDI: $1,715
A/C Tax: $100
Price as Tested: $59,165
Competitors:
Audi A4/S4
BMW 3 Series
Infiniti G37/Q50
Lexus IS
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Crash Test Results:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)
