Last week the need arose for me to take myself, two passengers, our luggage and an electric piano on a 300-mile round trip, and if I had chosen a car for the job I could hardly have done better than the Volvo XC90. Everyone and everything was stowed neatly, and the organic proportion of the cargo made a point of saying how comfortable it was.The seating layout we used was just one of several possibilities. The XC90 can carry six people, though there's so little legroom in the back row that its occupants can be of only the smallest stature. If you cram so much humanity on board the luggage volume is a mere 249 litres, but this extends to 1837 litres if you convert the car into a two-seater.And that's really quite easy to do. The seats in the XC90 fold away simply and effectively, adding more area to an almost perfectly flat load space in the process. Few manufacturers do the job as well, though many try.The test car was a D5, which means it had the Euro IV-compliant 2.4-litre five-cylinder turbo diesel engine that replaced the original Euro III unit last year. The later engine not only meets what have become the current European exhaust emissions standards - it is also substantially more powerful, with 185bhp rather than the previous 163bhp.The real advantage of this is that it makes the XC90 an even more relaxed cruiser than before. It's also quicker, but the potential expense of using this extra performance is dizzying. According to the official fuel economy figures, the XC90 D5 returns 31.4mpg on the combined cycle, but this is a far cry from the 26mpg our car's computer claimed during this test.Considering the amount of time I spent cruising gently on A-roads, I'd have expected the D5 at least to equal the official figure, and possibly improve on it by a small margin. Failing to reach the target by over 20% was not in the script.On the other hand, if you can afford to buy the car in the first place, perhaps fuel costs are not much of an issue. Spurn the options list and you'll pay just over £35,000 for the XC90 in SE specification, but if you add as many extras as Volvo has done with the car it supplied to us the figure skyrockets to £46,463.Forty-six grand! You can buy a Range Rover for that. And somehow, despite the undoubted popularity of the XC90, I don't believe the Volvo badge inspires anything like the same pride as the Range Rover one does.Exactly what do you get for the extra £11k plus change? Well, there are some low-cost items in there, like the First Aid kit and warning triangle which will set you back a total of £43.93. I would have thought that these could have been thrown in as standard, but let's leave that for now. We have sterner matters to deal with.Like the Inscription upholstery, fashioned by Bridge of Weir Leather and costing £2260. And the Premium Pack, consisting of electrically-controlled and heated front seats, luxury floor mats (!), bi-xenon headlamps with their own cleaning system (washers) and a big audio upgrade, making a total of £2030. And the Communications Pack (Volvo On Call, an integrated phone and satellite navigation) for £2550. And dark tinted rear windows for £325. And six-speed Geartronic automatic transmission for £1350.Quite a lot more on top of that, too. See your Volvo dealer for details . . . except that I have to mention the Cross Country Pack, which costs £909 and includes roof protection ribs, a rear skid plate, a load carrier and a pair of running boards.It's the running boards I object to. If you like getting your trousers (or, I dare say, skirt) muddy as you leave a car, then you simply have to buy an XC90 and specify the Cross Country Pack, because the running boards are an absolute must. They have been designed - clearly by someone with a talent and passion in these matters - exactly for this purpose, and they do the job every time. Personally I prefer my trousers unmuddied, and can think of better uses for £909.This is not the only example of twittishness in the XC90's design. The most serious becomes apparent the first time you try to check what's in the blind spot and discover you can see nothing but the centre pillar between the front and rear doors. Volvo has a system for overcoming this, and I've no doubt it works very well, but it wasn't fitted on the test car, so I had to keep hauling myself forward to see round the pillar before I dared overtake anyone.The parking brake system is also more annoying than it needs to be. You apply the brake by pressing a pedal, and release it by pulling a lever, which is not a method I've ever liked in the first place. Volvo, however, has made the issue more stressful yet, because when you pull the lever it's all too easy for a stray thumb to switch on the front foglights (or the rear ones, or sometimes both). From now on, I'll be slightly more sympathetic towards XC90 owners when they dazzle me with unnecessary candlepower - they may, after all, simply have been careless when trying to release the brake.By the end of the test I was becoming quite ratty about silly faults like this. At the same time, I couldn't help appreciating its better points, among which the load flexibility and the relaxed behaviour of the D5 engine are sovereign. But if I owned the car I think its good points would become so familiar as to be unnoticeable, while its bad points would eventually drive me batty. And the memory of having spent over £46,000 in order to feel like that would not help a bit. Engine 2401cc, 5 cylinders Power 185bhp Fuel/CO2 31.4mpg / 239g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 11.5 seconds Top speed 121mph Price £35,175 Release date 15/05/2010
Our Rating
