3.2 4dr All-Wheel Drive
2010 Volvo XC60

2010 Volvo XC60 - Click above for high-res image gallery Volvo has seen better days. Just a few short years ago, the Swedish automaker was the lone bright spot in Ford's European luxury operation, boasting impressive sales and actual profits. Fast-forward to 2009, and the situation couldn't be more different. Sales are downright depressing, revenues are worse, and the automaker has a "For Sale" sign on the front lawn, yet nobody has bothered to show up for the open house. For Volvo to have a legitimate chance of survival, all future products have to be home runs, beginning with the XC60 crossover. The XC60 slots below the XC70 wagon and the XC90 crossover, finally giving Volvo a player in the lucrative entry-level luxury crossover realm. The stalwarts of the segment – the Lexus RX and Acura MDX – play to consumer's needs and desires, offering superior reliability, inoffensive looks, maxed out interiors, and top-notch tech options. Looking at the XC60 from afar, the newest Volvo passes the appearance and interior test, but does it have enough to get customers back into Volvo showrooms? Make the jump to find out. %Gallery-69345% Photos Copyright ©2009 Chris Paukert / Weblogs, Inc. Our XC60 tester was an all-wheel drive T6 model with a price tag of $42,250, which includes Volvo's $2,700 multimedia package with a high-end Dolby Surround Sound system, navigation, and a backup camera, as well as a $1,000 climate package bringing with it heated seats and washer fluid, rain sensing wipers and an air quality system. The panoramic moonroof on our tester normally carries a price tag of $1,200, but it is currently being added to all XC60s free of charge. From the outside, the XC60 is all Volvo, with an XC90-like nose and clean, uncluttered lines accentuated by broad shoulders. Though the XC60 shares plenty of design cues with its larger sibling, the smaller crossover pulls off the corporate Volvo look more gracefully and easily competes with its segment-mates where inoffensiveness tends to trump dynamic styling. With a six-speed automatic transmission handling shifting duties and delivering the 3.0-liter inline-six's 281 horsepower and 295 lb-ft to all four wheels, the XC60 feels a bit heavy off the line, but there's plenty of pop available once you get all 4,174 pounds moving forward. Although topping the two-ton mark hardly makes the XC60 a bantamweight, it's the lightest crossover among its competitors, and when you slip the transmission into manual mode, the XC60 delivers even more punch from a standstill, though we'd still recommend shying away from stoplight drags. On the fuel economy front, we averaged 18.2 mpg in mixed driving, which puts the XC60 in the middle-of-the-pack for AWD crossovers of this size. The platform underpinning XC60 is shared with several vehicles, including the Land Rover LR2 and the Ford Mondeo. While notably more edgy than the larger XC90, this smaller Volvo still errs more on the side of cruiser than corner cutter. However, Volvo didn't engineer a wallowing pig. The XC60's …
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