Turns out it’s not so bad being a grown-up
Are you inally ready for the big Volvo estate you’ve always resisted? Because it’s ready for you. By Ben Oliver
AT LAST YEAR’S Geneva motor show I stood on the Volvo stand with friend and US YouTube presenter Jonny Lieberman. We both like fast, powerful cars. But we’re also both in our early forties with kids, and we agreed that the new Volvo V90 was our car of the show. We also both have beards, but it seems that’s no longer necessary to desire a Volvo estate.
A year and a month later, a V90 appeared on my drive. Volvo offered me one in the same Maple Brown paint and ‘blond’ leather interior with walnut trim as that Geneva car. It had been specified by design chief Thomas Ingenlath to be displayed at an awards ceremony. It looked sensational, but I worried about the effect my kids and bikes might have on that cabin. It wouldn’t feel as elegant and luxurious filled with child seats and smelling of grease. Something darker and sportier might be better, I reasoned.
I would also have had to wait another six weeks for Thomas’s car, when I knew a V90 would start making my life easier immediately. And so it has. I now think mine looks just as good in Bursting Blue with black trim, and so do the legions of people who have already circumnavigated it in the car park, had their heads turned by it as I’ve driven past, taken a photograph of it or stopped to confirm that it really is a Volvo.
Mine is a D5 R-Design with 232bhp and all-wheel drive. The entry level, front-drive 187bhp D4 starts from £34,995: adding my car’s extra power and traction and kit brings the price to £43,955 and only adds 10 to the basic car’s 119g/km. The major options are highlighted below. Of the others, Apple CarPlay at £300 is already in heavy use, as is the £575 Keyless Drive, which includes hands-free boot opening and closing and is a constant godsend when both hands are occupied with toddlers whose mobility far exceeds their road sense. Total price is £52,675, but
that includes three grand’s worth of further options I wouldn’t have picked myself: I’ll examine and report on those later.
The car arrived with 72 miles on the clock and appears to be perfectly assembled – not something you can take for granted, even when they know it’s going to be written about in a magazine. So far I’ve done only a few hundred miles: too little for any meaningful judgement on real-world fuel economy. But early acquaintance indicates it might be all I hoped for when I first saw it in Geneva: beautiful, comfortable, and entirely fit for my purposes.
Lest this sound like some Swedish free-love-in, it’s not perfect. Some of the cabin material quality is short of German standards, and if you know where to look you can see where cost has been saved in the body engineering. Non-OCD punters won’t notice. They might, however, struggle occasionally with the iPad-style central screen. Despite its size, its user interface and sat-nav directions sometimes lack Apple clarity.
But more on this in future reports. I’ve wanted this car for a year and a month. Excuse me while I go and drive it.