Volvo has applied the Cross Country treatment to its handsome small estate car, the V60. TopGear is reliably informed that this does not mean being told to don short-shorts and plimsolls and run laps of the school playing field until your tears freeze.
In Volvo-speak, Cross Country means taking a standard road car and adding ride-height, four-wheel drive and rufty-tufty plastic body armour. The results are always cars we like a lot. You get all the off-road ability most profligate SUV devotees will ever need and a slightly more commanding driving position, without ending up with a two-tonne Canyonero that causes solar eclipses wherever it lumbers. And that costs more to buy, insure, run and even jet-wash than a normal car.
If you can do without the truly hearse-like cargo ability of the V90 Cross Country, try this. The specs are as predictable as they are appealing.
Underfoot, there’s a 75mm hike in ride height. All-wheel drive is standard-fit. And you won’t be short of ‘control’. Volvo says “Hill Descent Control, Electronic Stability Control, Corner Traction Control and a special Off-Road driving model [are standard]” as well. You fall off the rutted campsite track or farm byway in one of these things, and it’s your own fault.
Under the bonnet, there’s a choice of one engine, for now. It’s the heartland four-cylinder turbodiesel: badged D4, delivering 187bhp and 400Nm. Volvo says there’ll be both mild-hybrid and a Twin Engine plug-in versions to follow. Just don’t expect a Polestar-XC mash-up. There’s a reason Audi doesn’t make an RS4 Allroad, after all.
No word on expected prices yet, but usually an XC version asks around ten percent more than a standard Volvo, so we’d bargain on the V60 Cross Country relieving you of about £40,000. But the good karma of not just plumping for another predictable over-specified 4x4? Priceless, surely…