• Large boot with rear seats in place
• Comfortable rear seats with plenty of space
• Rivals have larger boots with rear seats dropped

How much space is there?

Supremely comfortable front seats are the high point of the V60 interior, though the rear seats offer more than adequate head and legroom for two adults. It is a reasonable sized for families, with wide-opening doors, plenty of glass area (for a bright interior) and lots of storage areas and cubbyholes.

The middle rear seat, however, isn’t ideal for taller passengers as the oversized transmission tunnel means there’s not much footroom. If the front passengers lower the front seats as far as they’ll go, footroom for outer rear passengers is a little limited too, though this is a minor frustration rather than a big issue.

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Boot space and storage

The V60 has a larger boot (seats up) than its direct rivals and it does offer plenty of room, with a usefully deep underfloor storage compartment too. With the seats down, capacity is 1,441 litres, which means its smaller than the BMW 3 Series Touring and Audi A4 Avant rather surprisingly.

There’s no penalty for picking a PHEV, although it’s worth pointing out there are many cheaper estates that offer far more rear space. Even a Volkswagen Golf estate has around 100 litres more room in its boot.

There are lashing points, hangers for securing bag handles and levers to drop the rear seats, which make this space very usable indeed. There’s also a handy pop-up vertical divider for preventing luggage from flying around the boot. Adding to this is the standard-fit electric tailgate, and Plus models include the option for hands-free opening and closing, for easily getting into the boot when your hands are full.

Once folded the rear seats sit reasonably flat, so loading large items shouldn’t be too difficult. Another bonus is that the plug-in hybrid Twin Engine versions feature a similarly practical boot, with most of the plug-in tech being located in the transmission tunnel. You do, however, lose the underfloor storage compartment.

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Is it easy to park?

The V60 is a relatively large car, though as stated above, it has a reasonable amount of glass all around it’s easier to drive and manoeuvre than many cars of the same size.

Several automatic parking systems are available – plus the option of a reversing camera – which should take the stress out of parking. The 360-degree camera system, in particular, is particularly good, and using it soon becomes second nature.

Safety

• Impressive array of safety equipment fitted as standard
• Closely-related XC60 one of the safest cars ever tested
• Awarded a five-star Euro NCAP rating back in 2018

Cars from the Swedish brand have long had an enviable reputation for safety, so it was no surprise that when it was crash-tested by Euro NCAP back in 2018 it received a five-star score. Standard on all V60s are a host of sophisticated systems including Volvo’s City Safety automatic braking tech, which can slow itself to avoid pedestrians, cyclists and large animals.

Other standard-fit equipment includes Run-off Road Mitigation and Run-off Road Protection, which help limit the severity of any crash, should the car leave the road, plus Oncoming Lane Mitigation, which works to prevent the car from veering out of its lane into the path of oncoming traffic. Active speed limit is also available – this automatically adjusts the adaptive cruise control speed with the help of the traffic sign recognition function

As of 2020, the V60 has a maximum speed limited to 112mph. It comes as part of Volvo’s Vision 2020 programme whereby there shouldn’t be a death or serious injury to a driver in one of its cars.

Watch: Volvo V60 Euro NCAP crash test video