Car review: Volvo XC90

Growing families are a big challenge when it comes to car choices. And I don’t just mean the latest, gurgling arrival from the maternity ward.

No – it gets even tougher when the only way to tempt your teenage children away on holiday with you is to take their partner along too.

We wanted to rekindle the holidays of which dreams were once made – before our twins disappeared to university – by renting a cottage in Cornwall and enjoying ice creams, sunny beaches, hikes to village pubs, dog walks and swims. Trouble was, they wouldn’t come without their partners.

All of which meant some head-scratching and the perfect opportunity to give serious thought to the various seven-seater vehicles now on the market. There are several to choose from including Audi’s Q7, Land Rover’s Discovery, Ford’s Galaxy, Skoda’s Kodiaq and so on.

In the end, we decided to try out Volvo’s big, safe (the firm reported last year that since the model was launched, in 2014, there’s not been a single passenger or driver fatality in it), imposing XC90 T8 Twin Engine.

For good measure (have you ever seen how much clobber 19-year-olds carry around?) we threw on a big Volvo roofbox onto the ‘Passion Red’ model, and ended up with even more space than we needed.

With its impressive motorway-cruising ability, smooth ride, hushed cabin, supportive seats, masses of head, shoulder, hip and legroom and impressive sound-system, it could hardly have been a better choice.

In the event, we travelled from London to beautiful Lerryn, in Cornwall in two cars, and then all clambered into the Volvo while on holiday for day trips, the two smallest adults fitting comfortably into the ‘occasional’ seats in the back, and the dog (Sheldon, an American Eskimo, if you ask) in the centre of the middle row on a blanket. Normally, this leaves only a modicum of storage behind the rear seats but, with the roofbox too, this presented no problem at all.

Leaving the cottage at Lerryn for day trips to explore Tintagel, Bodmin and the coast, the XC90 proved great family transport and – if the particular model hadn’t been equipped with bling LED-illuminated running boards (a £1,250 option), it would have been near-perfect. Not only did they make getting in and out harder – you have to step ‘over’ them while getting in and out – they also made the vehicle a little too wide in one or two tight spots.

Otherwise perfect? Well, maybe. We took the range-topping Twin Engine AWD R-Design Pro Auto, a plug-in hybrid model claimed to offer an amazing combined fuel economy of 100.9mpg, with CO2 emissions rated at just 63 g/km.

All very amazing but, unless you have somewhere convenient to plug in, regularly, slightly frustrating. If you do plug it in to the mains, this is claimed to give an ‘electric only’ range of 25 miles; sufficient, for instance, for a ‘clean’ daily school run in London or commute to work.

Unfortunately, at the otherwise charming rental cottage, we had no plug-in point so – en route to Cornwall – we engaged ‘B’ (for Brakes) on the auto shift, enabling the Volvo to, rather cleverly, provide extra charge for the batteries via the brakes. The brakes always add some additional charge, but this mode means they do it with even more vigour.

Fortunately, the Twin Engine is designed so that even if you can’t plug in for maximum volts, the engine always produces its own electricity while running – although it won’t give the full range that plugging-in does. This also places more load on the two-litre turbo and super-charged engine, thereby raising fuel consumption. But I suppose you can’t have something for nothing.

Of course the idea of the hybrid is that you don’t necessarily want to travel on electric power alone; its other key benefit is that it gives the 2.0-litre petrol engine a helping hand; for instance during acceleration – or cruising along the motorway with a roof box – thereby improving your MPG, and power delivery.

In the case of the T8 Twin Engine R-Design Pro Auto, it also made it very fast, delivering 0-62mph in 5.8 seconds.

My favourite driving mode was the optional £745 ‘Polestar Engineered Optimisation’ setting which tweaks the engine mapping, gears, steering and suspension, transforming the XC90 into an even faster, more taut-handling beast. Much more fun, although, again, there is an MPG penalty to pay. 

For those not keen on plugging in there is also a mild diesel hybrid version, and petrol hybrid versions are on their way too. The XC90 range, in T5 Momentum guise, starts at £50,435.

On motorways and A-roads the XC90 Twin Engine was unimpeachable; king of the road. In tight spots along the Cornish lanes and fishing village car parks it occasionally felt a little too large and – in tighter bends – heavy, no doubt due in part to the extra batteries it carries. The automatic gear shifter – which must, unlike normal shifts, be prodded twice to get into Drive, and twice to get into Reverse, because it’s a ‘shift by wire’ system, was mildly irritating.

Overall however, this is one serene, luxurious – and hugely spacious – family vehicle that will make sense not just for Cornish holidays but for London motorists with the ability and tendency to plug in, whether their children are school, or university-goers.

Details: Volvo XC90 T8 Twin Engine AWD R-Design Pro Auto

Cost: £71,745

Combined fuel economy: 100.9 mpg

CO2 emissions: 63g/km

Polestar Engineered Optimisation: £745