WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
The S60 T8 has nearly 400bhp and claimed economy of 166mpg, but how does it stack up in the real world?
t took a while, but at long last our Volvo S60 T8 is here. With the lead time needed to build and ship the car from Volvo’s US factory in South Carolina, plus the months of national lockdown curtailing deliveries, it’s been over six months since I finalised the spec on the configurator and hit send. So it’s worth a refresher on what we’ve got.
After a few months with the luxurious Inscription flagship, we have swapped into the rather racier R Design and, crucially, abandoned pure petrol power in favour of a plugin hybrid. When we finalised our order all those months ago, this hightech unit was known as the T8 Twin Engine, but some subtle tweaking to the line-up means it’s now called the Recharge T8. So there you go.
Happily, almost everything else remains as before, including the powertrain, which is the bit we’re really interested in. Under the bonnet is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol
Iengine that gets its induction air compressed by both a turbocharger and supercharger (like a Lancia Delta S4, which is, you know, really rather cool) to deliver 299bhp and a healthy 295lb ft, all sent to the front wheels via an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The rear axle gets a Siemens-designed 86bhp electric motor that drives the wheels through its own single-speed transmission. Running up the spine of the car is a 11.6kwh lithium ion battery, which can be charged in five hours using a domestic plug or three hours with any kind of rapid charger.
The resulting numbers make for impressive reading. Despite tipping the scales at 2048kg (that’s a biscuit less than an entry-level Range Rover), the S60 is claimed to dust off the 0-62mph dash in just 4.6sec, yet it’s capable of up to 166.2mpg, emits as little as 38g/km of CO2 and will travel up to 35 miles using just electricity. Too good to be true? Well, that’s what we’re hoping to find out.
What about the rest of the car? R-design trim means subtly reprofiled bumpers, a lack of chrome trim and simpler five-spoke 18in alloy wheels – to these eyes, it looks more cohesive than the slightly fussy, chrome-tinselled Inscription. Our car’s visuals are further enhanced by