Volvo XC90 long-term test review: a popular holiday companion

The Volvo XC90 has been on the move a lot, again, to the Alps, to the former RAF Alconbury for an upcoming feature and to Ikea, all with other people. And to work, and back, and work, and back, with me. It’s the default choice for anybody who has a lot of miles to do.

To its skiing holiday occupants, it was superbly accommodating. They liked the same things I do: the ease and comfort of driving it, some luggage space even with seven seats in place and being able to push different seats up or down to squeeze in long loads.

But, like me, they found the odd foible. For example, if you need to pop the Volvo XC90’s gearbox into Park and unfasten the seatbelt and open the door — I often need to do it to open a gate, but my colleagues needed to in a French car park — then the car decides that you’ve finished your journey and switches off, even though you actually only wanted to exit the car for less than 10sec, to reach a payment barrier, or bin, or just to see where you’ve parked. So you have to do the whole restart process, which, if the Volvo can’t ‘sense’ the keyless key, as sometimes happens, is a right old nuisance.

Sometimes Land Rovers and Jaguars do this, too. Just let me decide when the journey is over, okay?

The luggage cover, meanwhile, covers things as it should in the boot, assuming you angle its trailing edge into a securing groove. But don’t quite locate it properly, as is possible, and it’ll snap back open a few seconds later — probably after you’ve shut the boot and walked away — and its trailing edge is so wide that it fouls the rearmost seatbelts as it goes.

Despite the odd niggle, though, the mileage is up to more than 15,000 because the fundamentals of this car are superb. A service is due at 18,000 miles, at which point the front tyres will also want changing, which I’m hoping I’ll reach before Volvo wants the car back. It would like us to try six months in a T8 model, having spent six in this D5. More on which, I suspect, next time. 

Overcoming sat-nav issues

I have found a way to cancel the destination on the sat-nav (or, rather, someone at Volvo told me).

Previously I’d only found the ‘pause’ button, but push the destination at the top of the screen and it gives the option to clear the itinerary. The map, incidentally, is one of the clearest and easiest to scroll around of any car sat-nav system. 

Price £45,750; Price as tested £51,770 Economy 36.1mpg Faults Electronic niggles Expenses None Last seen 11.5.16

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