FUN IN A FAMILY CAR
We load up the kids in our long-term Honda CR-V Sport 7 for some true family fun
We’re not deluded enough to think an appliance white (okay, it’s officially Premium White Pearl) Honda CR-V sparks motoring excitement. But when life progresses and the family expands, an SUV is likely on the shopping list, and there are some brands and models that spark a little more excitement for different reasons.
The Honda CR-V Sport 7 is unique in the four-model range, as the only seven-seater.
And with a $49k price tag for a known and trusted badge and seven seats, there’s some real appeal in the CR-V — which is why we set a mission of simply having some fun in a family car to prove that you might have to lean towards a practical car, but it won’t stop the fun from flowing.
So with this in mind, combined with a pre-emptive strike of the “I’m bored” chant, during the Christmas break we loaded up our three kids and headed towards Manukau for a day of family fun at NZ’s most iconic fun park, Rainbow’s End.
In these often stressful times, it’s the little things that make family life a little more endearing rather than enduring. Like the rear doors that almost open out to 90 degrees: not exciting, but very practical and appreciated.
Like the Isofix mounting points in the second row that make slotting in booster seats easy. There’s also an automatic ratchet function on the belt for child seats that use the seat belt as the primary source of restraint. Once the belt is fed through the seat, and tightened, at a specific distance, it “locks” into place. Which is great for keeping a capsule in place without the belt slackening off — the downside is, however, for a child in a booster seat, it can sometimes “catch” in the wrong place, and requires a full seat-out release. It’s not just Honda, either, we’ve noticed this good/bad feature with other cars.
While our 2-year-old has his capsule seat, we like to split up our 5- and 8-year-olds to, er, minimise the headaches during travel, so we flipped the second row seat forward and up for access to the third row, a process that can be done one-handed via two separate straps — and can be secured via a strap to the B-pillar if required. The second row seat also slides fore-aft, giving a little more room where it’s needed.
Cup holders everywhere — 10 in total for the Sport 7 — certainly help keep kids happy, with two pop-up bars and storage bins in the third row, along with a roofmounted rear AC system offering fan-speed and four vents to feed the rear quarters.
Loaded up with the family of five, the Hamilton-Auckland Hamilton round trip saw around 7.5l/100km of mostly motorway running and largely traffic-free holiday roads, with the AC pumping and the only adverse comment related to the droning from the engine/CVT gearbox when climbing the Bombay Hills or when needing a burst of speed to overtake.
The ride quality is also on the softer side, which means a great compliant drive 99 per cent of the time, but on big bumps and/or when loaded it does sit noticeably lower, and can sometimes bottomout on big bumps.
After a day of rainbow fun, on the Stratosfear and Fearfall and introducing our 2-year-old boy to Family Karts and the Log Flume, back to the carpark, the Honda keyfob’s double-press of the unlock button drops all four windows and opens the sunroof to purge the superheated summer air, and with three exhausted kids and two similarly drained parents, we set the active cruise control for a relaxing drive home.
Kids being kids though, they soon wanted to know the next adventure, so a few days later we were loading up all three in the second row (just fitting) and squeezing two kids’ bikes and a balance bike into the rear of the CR-V, with the third row dropped. Not quite a flat-floor, this helped a little in the game of bicycle Tetris, and with just a hint of wheel overhead in the second row, the Avantidrome’s Bike Skills Park proved a great place to burn up some more energy and get used to the new Christmas bikes.
The appeal of the 110km/h speed limits on the way to the venue is also part of the fun.
And as if the kids weren’t spoiled enough (all in lieu of going away somewhere this year, I should add) a few days later we were down to Rotorua for some Skyline luge races and some more fun with the 8-year-old and 5-year-old girls experiencing a wet and wild Zorb downhill run for the first time.
Exiting the ball like drowned rats, a towel off and the advantage of the weather-durable seats in the CR-V meant minimal headaches or hassles on the way home.
And that’s the way it ought to be; until the fun continues next time.
Performance SUVs might seem a bit silly, but there are a lot of them around. People love ’em. Any European brand worth its raised ride height has at least one super-quick crossover in its ranks. Preferably more.
But high-performance plug-in SUVs? There’s Porsche’s supersized Cayenne, but that’s about it right now. Which is weird, given the potential to combine smug zero-emissions city driving with an electric boost to push you back into the seat when you’re in the mood.
Well, now there’s also this: the Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar Engineered. The Volvo XC60 you know and Polestar you’ve probably heard of too: it used to be Volvo’s racing division, but it’s now a subsidiary creating its own range of bespoke performance and luxury electric vehicles (EVs). Think of it as an EV-focused BMW M or Mercedes-AMG, and like those brands it also still dabbles with enhancements for existing models as well as doing its own ground-up stuff.
That’s where this car comes in. The T8 is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) version of the XC60 SUV: petrol engine at the front, lithium-ion battery pack and electric motor driving the rear. It’s all on brand and the concept makes a lot of sense.
But the car itself? It’s a bit more edgy. The hybrid powertrain has been pumped up to 311kW/
670Nm – not outrageous, but certainly serious. And remember, Volvo’s T8 petrol engine is turbocharged and supercharged, so it was pretty interesting even before Polestar laid hands on it.
There’s an aluminium strut under the bonnet and monster sixpiston Akebono brakes on the front, which completely fill the
21-inch wheels. The chassis features Ohlins Dual Flow Valve shock absorbers, with damping that can be adjusted to 22 different settings. Per wheel. By hand.
That’s right, adjusting the suspension is a hands-on job, with the front wheel controls under the bonnet and the rears reachable through the wheel arches. How often would you really do that? Who knows; how often would you seriously punch your family SUV to
100km/h in 5.2 seconds for that matter?
The point is, you can. This attention to detail is sheer delight for the car enthusiast and the outrageous suspension set-up makes the XC60 Polestar Engineered unique. And the under-bonnet adjusters and strut brace are beautiful to look at.
How does it work? Don’t come expecting the kind of necksnapping performance that pureEVs are so good at serving up. If you’re driving the XC60 T8 Polestar briskly, it’s the sensation of the various technologies working together that makes it interesting; it may technically be an “EV”, but a lot of the appeal is mechanical.
Having that pure-EV commuting ability does make the XC60 a better SUV, though. While the standard XC60 is big on comfort and ease-of-use, Volvo’s eightspeed Geartronic transmission can be a bit dim-witted about town. The T8 sidesteps that completely with a full charge on board by running in single-speed “Pure” electric mode.
If you’re too heavy with the right foot it’ll fire up the petrol engine to help, so Pure is not for hardcharging. But it offers pretty decent EV range: Volvo claims 46km from the 11.6kWh battery pack and we found 40km in city driving easily achievable.
That battery is tucked away in the transmission tunnel, so there’s no impact on the standard XC60’s 505l of boot space. Practical.
All of the above is relevant to the T8 in a general sense, but none of it puts the Polestar Engineered bits to work. So let’s do that.
The powertrain is at its happiest storming away in the mid-range, so it really rewards a driving style more focused on momentum than redline-chasing. Which is perfect given you can adjust the suspension just-so to suit your own personal driving character or (even better) the road ahead. Once the novelty has passed, the manually adjustable suspension is a bit of a chore – especially at the back, where you have to reach under the wheel arches, prise off a dirty rubber seal and feel for the clicks as you turn the tiny wheel.
But it’s worth having a fiddle, as it’s the chassis that brings the greatest change to Polestar from the humble XC60. The company even recommends some typical settings. Position zero (the shiny golden dial at its most extreme clockwise setting) is the firmest — and it’s really firm. Polestar suggests position 15 for performance driving, 10 for standard running and number four if you like to keep it comfy.
Dual Flow Valve is a proprietary Ohlins technology designed to speed up the response of the bump-and-rebound of the shock absorbers. So while the ride is never cushy, it’s consistently wellcontrolled regardless of how far you’ve dialled up the firmess of the suspension.
The T8 is still a heavy beast: well over two tonnes and around 150kg more than a non-hybrid T6. But the configurable suspension makes it easy to get the thing to handle the way you want.
You can enjoy all of this from the comfort of one of the nicest cabins in any production car. Take “comfort” literally, because the seats in the XC60 are a marvel.
The Sensus nine-inch portrait touch screen in the centre console doesn’t seem quite as amazing in these days of Tesla, but it’s still nicely configured and allows a relatively button-free dashboard.
From an ease-of-use and quality point of view, this is just as impressive as any other Volvo; which is very impressive indeed.
Good luck explaining why your medium-sized family SUV is loaded with technical performance and handling equipment. But then Volvo is not alone in doing that; far from it. It’s just that the XC60 Polestar Engineered does things a bit differently and you’ve got to love it for that.