The Swedish firms new saloon hasn’t been independently crash tested yet by Euro NCAP, but we’d expect the Volvo S60 safety to be good enough to score the full five stars, especially as Volvo take crash protection extremely seriously.

As well as the usual six airbags and anti-skid control, the S60 comes with the same City Safety as standard that uses radar to detect a car’s hard braking out in front. If it fails to detect any input from the driver it applies the brakes.

New safety technology includes a world first – Pedestrian Protection. The system comes standard with the Driver Support Pack (£1,450) and uses both a radar sensor fixed in the grille and a camera mounted in the top of the windscreen to identify pedestrians. At below speeds of 21mph both camera and radar identify pedestrians and detect their movements. If the car thinks the pedestrian is in risk of being struck by the car, and all the systems detect no input from the driver it carries out a full emergency braking manoeuvre. The system is effective and should cut road deaths.

Saloons aren’t the most practical of cars and the S60 is no exception. In fact we’d go further and say in its class the S60 is one of the least practical. The seats don’t completely fold flat, and both the Audi A4 and BMW 3-Series have at least a third more luggage space in the boot.

One area we have to commend Volvo is with being able to squeeze in two reasonably tall adults in the rear, although passengers will have to keep their heads down on exit and entry thanks to those rakish lines.