https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZeFDe44DdoCan you name the truck with four wheel drive,
smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown!
Canyonero! (Yah!) Canyonero!
Canyonero!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero! (Yah!)
She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!
Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)
Drive Canyonero!
Woah Canyonero!
Woah!
Well not quite. But now the song is stuck in my head.
The lowdown.
2015.5 Volvo V60 T6 AWD
Premier Plus trim level
Options
Climate Package – heating for rear seats, steering wheel, windshield, and washer nozzles, as well as interior air quality system.
Technology Package – Adaptive cruise control, upgraded City Safety (pedestrian and cyclist detection), lane departure gizmo, full auto braking, auto highbeams, road sign information, driver alert control (coffee break gizmo), distance alert
BLIS Package – blindspot sensors, cross traffic alert, front/rear parking sensors, and something called “Lane Change Merge Aid”
Sensus Connected Navigation (via dealer software flash)
Body kit (silver color) – rear diffuser, side skirts, and front lip thing
19” Bor Wheels – with Pirelli Cinturato P7 All Seasons, 235/40/19. I believe it also changes the suspension (20mm lower and higher damper rates, thus resulting in the “sport chassis” which is the stiffest until you get to the real full beans Polestar car).
BiXenon Headlights – adaptive, with washers
Piano Black Wood Inlays
Exterior: Saville Grey (dark grey metallic)
Interior: charcoal (its black, ish, but not quite black black)
So its pretty close to a fully loaded model. The only things I think I’m missing are:
-Premium sound (a Harman Kardon system)
-Auto dimming exterior mirrors
-Certain R-Design cosmetic bits
-Polestar flash
I got a pretty solid deal, though I wouldn’t call it a fantastic deal as there was limited support from Volvo at this time. Overall I’m happy though.
Newmarket Volvo in case anyone is wondering. One Mr Helland helped me. Highly recommend him – knowledgeable and very quick to respond to inquiries. Also quite patient with my many detailed questions.
So the random thoughts part. I’ve only driven the car very briefly, just back from the dealership and won’t have need to drive anywhere until the weekend. So this is all very preliminary.
-Call me biased but I think this is one of the best looking cars money can buy. The body kit really sets it off just right, essentially the body kit and the 19” Bor wheels are the equivalent of the M-Sport or S-Line package, certainly cosmetically and to an extent from the suspension perspective as well. Love it.
-The engine. She is a beauty. Sounds really great and pulls like a train. My research is mixed on the question of whether or not running it on 87 will cause noticeable performance / fuel economy degredation. I’ll find out. Volvo assures that it will not affect reliability.
-I goosed it a few times coming out of corners and didn’t notice anything untoward from the handling side. The car does have brake based torque vectoring but overall it doesn’t really compete on the same level as SHAWD from a performance perspective. That said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the handling and its quite pleasant…its just that the TL is a real athlete IMHO.
-The ride, despite being on the hardest springs/dampers and 19” wheels, is pretty comfortable. Way more comfy than the TL and seems a bit more composed over bumps too.
-The transmission is a bit old hat by now but at least its an Aisin unit so probably won’t break. Turns 2100RPM or so at 120km/h which is a bit high…I mean with 325lbft turbo I6 why does it need such an aggressive 6th gear? At least it responds to paddle commands pretty rapidly, better than the TL here.
-Its quiet. Really quiet inside and substantially quieter than both the TL and the GLK.
-Everything feels dense, solid, heavy. Mercedes like. I am most pleased. No bad noises when going over bumps, just a faint thud. No rattles. Nothing.
-The interior isn’t quite as big as you might think. When reaching for the seat memory controls I had to jam my arm down there to get it past the door handle. Maybe I’ve gotten used to the TL though, which is a damn big car in terms of interior space.
-Overall interior quality is excellent. From a quick look the materials trade blows with the TL, but overall I’d say the plastics are better in the V60 while the leather is better (or seems so, at least, I’m no expert) in the TL.
-The cargo area again isn’t the size you might think it is given the swoopy roofline. A V70 or E-Class wagon it is not. But its big enough for my purposes. 40/20/40 folding seats and general versatility in the cargo area enhance usefulness. Both a privacy cargo cover and a cargo-roller-net thing are included as part of the price, and both are removable.
-The seats are awesome. That is all. My wife complains about the fixed (as in non adjustable) headrest, though I think that can be fixed with a $10 neck cushion. With the 2015.5 model year Volvo also finally switched to electric lumbar. No idea if the passenger side has it though.
-I love the steering wheel. Its very chunky and has soft padding. The paddles are also quite nicely made (seem a mix of metal with a rubberized grip on the back). The steering itself (EPS) has different weight settings and firms up very nicely at speed. It all quite natural. Ratio seems a smidge slower than the TL, but quicker than the CLK was.
-There is a rear headrest release button that you can use to bonk rear passengers on the head with just like in some MB models
-The adaptive cruise works fantastically well. Extremely intuitive and everything is well calibrated. It will follow pretty closely if you want it, too. On the highway I was using one of the longer following distances as the closest one really felt too close. IMO this is second only to Mercedes latest “Intelligent Drive” system that also integrates self-steering.
-The active headlights are extremely active. Even when you’re not moving, and just turning the wheel in the parking lot, you can see the beam aim moving. Its quite effective overall. There is also corner lighting. Overall just as good as the GLK/CLK.
-The auto high beam is a bit of a meh feature. It doesn’t seem to work the left and right sides independently, so it just pops back and forth between highs and lows, which is a bit jarring and a huge transition. In Europe Volvos have a very fancy “shutter” system (similar to the one on the F30 328i I drove in Germany) which essentially is “active beamforming” … its freaking awesome. But we don’t get it here, sadly.
-The nav seems pretty good, though the screen is small. Voice commands work decently well for entering addresses and you can just spit out a whole address like “123 Main St Toronto” and it will figure it all out. Again starting with 2015.5, all cars come with the navigation hardware already in the car – just has to be activated with a software flash. They still charge money for this software, but that’s life.
-The base audio is surprisingly really good, and I’m fairly picky about these things. Good bass punch and clarity as well. The lack of a center speaker hurts a bit but I doubt the HK system is worth the extra $ of the upgrade to the Platinum trim. Base audio is 4x40W amps with 8 speakers, has a 5 band EQ and separate bass/treble controls as well as speed compensation, so overall its fine.
Compared to the ELS system in the TL, at a standstill it can’t really compete, especially when dealing with DVD Audio where the TL really blows minds. But once you’re on the move, with road and wind noise, and listening to compressed audio sources, the real world difference is pretty minor (especially since the V60 is noticeably quieter and doesn’t need as high of a volume level to sound right).
-Sensus Connect is basically like ONSTAR bundled with a cell phone app. I’m supposed to be able to use my cell phone here as a remote starter, etc. It works, but it’s a bit sluggish. The car has a 3G modem built in and there are 6 months of free service included. I probably won’t renew because there are other connectivity options (you can tether your phone through either Wifi Hotspot or Bluetooth…another option of course is to just link it to your home wifi when its parked in the garage so you can always just remote start it in the morning without paying a subscription).
-The other part of Sensus Connect, the web radio, works as advertised but a bit sluggish when working over the built in 3G. A bunch of apps I’ll never use. Meh. In car entertainment is still a bit half baked.
-Strangely pressing the “CAM” button turns on the rear camera but NOT the parking sensors. So far it seems like only putting it in Reverse will activate the sensors, which is pretty silly. There’s sensors on both ends of the car!
-Storage in the car is a bit mixed. Glovebox is big and the “behind the button panel” thing is nice. But the armrest storage is quite small and there’s no sunglasses holder (wtf?)
-We bought the Volvo extended warranty. 8 years / 200k. It’s the “exclusionary” coverage so only specifically excluded items are not covered, everything else is covered. Shocks/struts are not covered, though control arms are. Importantly for me, all of the radars/cameras/electronics are covered. I suspect Volvo reliability is a notch above the Germans, based on very little data other tan lots of high mileage Volvos everywhere, but in any case I am covered for the long haul. My wife likes the idea of the extended warranty because it is a commitment mechanism for the car…which I am fine with.
Well that’s the braindump for now. Overall I’m very happy with it.
