Gadgetory

volvo has come a long way from the foxy 240 wagon of the 1970s the design now is much curvier more modern let's take a look at it in the 2013 volvo xc60 the xc60 is a midsize SUV volvo has one bigger vexy 90 but this is the smallest SUV in their lineup standard is the city safety feature they got some cameras mounted up here in a pod inside the windshield those look forward seeing cars and pedestrians at slow speeds 20 miles an hour or less the city safety system will actually bring the car to a complete stop if it's about to hit something at higher speeds 2530 miles an hour the system will still hit the brakes but it'll probably still hit whatever it is in front although the system will mitigate that collision Volvo makes a few other driver assistance features available on the xc60 one is adaptive cruise control which puts a little radar sensor out in front and the grill there's also a blind spot monitoring system which when you have a car to either side of the Volvo back in the blind spot the light of an icon in the side view mirror so you can see if there's a car in that blind spot without turning your head around and the cabin Volvo has your basic cabin text suite we've got a navigation system that's based on flash memories we've got a Bluetooth phone system and we've got some digital audio sources with a USB port in the console here I like the looks of the maps in the navigation system it's a really clean design and you kind of expect that from Volvo but this whole interface here these buttons and dials it's a little bizarre to figure out you know you don't really know where to start there's a dial over here with a menu button on top so you hit that and it suddenly brings you to your navigation menu which gives you your destination options so if I roll it around choose the menu item for set destination I get more options here I get address let me do that and then I get a selection of city street number and so if I try to put in a city here I get this rotary input thing and it's really kind of tedious to use you have to roll this dial around each letter navigation go to address you'll also use voice command to enter in a destination but then you actually have to say each the city the street and the number each separately is a separate component that's a little tedious too but it is faster than using this dial and I've got a USB Drive full of music plugged into the USB port here so I'm seeing the current track that's playing on this screen but how do I select music how do I get to my folder list from that USB Drive now if I had a iOS device plugged into that USB port it actually show a music library with album artist genre that sort of thing which is a better interface it doesn't do that for USB Drive Volvo does put HD radio in here which is nice and with the navigation function we also get traffic on here that traffic comes through FM radio so you don't have to pay for like a satellite radio subscription to get that information it'll also actively route around bad traffic problems so that that's convenient it's a good basic cabin text suite but what does it take it beyond that you kind of expect more in this premium car category and it also has bluetooth streaming so I could just keep my phone in my pocket and have the music stream to the stereo that stereo of course you see the PS label here that means premium sound in this platinum trim xc60 we have this upgraded sounds 650 watts pretty good sound clean sound I like it it's it's very enjoyable has good separation good distinction I would say it's the best I've ever heard but it's a good value for the money now amongst all these buttons on the interface here we also have this cam button has nothing to do with the engine by press that it activates the rear view camera so you can manually activate the rear view camera or just put it in Reverse which is also bring up the rear view and you see we have trajectory lines on here which is cool and distance lines as well overhead we have this panoramic sunroof that is a standard feature in that platinum trim it reaches back over the rear seats which is nice but only the first three quarters but opens up what we have under the hood here is kind of a miracle of packaging this is a three liter 6-cylinder engine but it's inline so all the cylinders are one after another and it's also transverse sideways but it still fits within this compartment it's got a pretty big turbo on it that turbo helps it make 300 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque the fuel economy numbers are 17 city 23 highway which is not great but in driving I've seen it averaged around 21 22 which is pretty good this xc60 drives pretty easily because of the turbos it generally gives decent power takes a little moment to kick in but then it starts there's a bit of travel in the suspension you feel that is it goes around corners because you really feel the load shift back and forth in normal roads it works pretty well to dampen out the plumps gives you really smooth ride as soon as I put it in its sport mode it is a whole different experience puts the power on tap at a much lower throttle point because of the fact that the sport button also doesn't make the suspension any better it it's an interesting sensation that makes this car a little harder to control so let's price out our 2013 volvo xc60 bass is 40,000 650 but bring it up to the Platinum package forty-five thousand two hundred fifty dollars you get all the cabin electronics standard Plus that rear view camera now to even bring it further CNET style you get the depth whose control is part of a technology package for twenty one hundred dollars and you can add the blind spot information system for another seven hundred dollars it still doesn't have some of the really advanced tech that we see in out ease or BMWs but overall a very nice driver