• Lots of passenger space
• Boot isn’t the largest in the class
• Shedloads of safety equipment

How much space is there?

The Volvo XC40 has a surprising amount of interior room for its size. There’s loads of head and legroom up front and the seats offer lots of adjustment. The driver’s seat on the entry-level Core model has manual height and tilt adjustment, while Plus models and up get electric adjustment and an extendable thigh support. The cabin also feels quite light and airy, especially when you opt for the Ultimate model which comes with a panoramic sunroof.

Rear room impresses, too. Even with the front seats pushed right back, there’s plenty of knee and leg room. The middle seat’s a decent size as well, although the chunky centre console does get in the way of middle passenger’s legs. It’s definitely more spacious than rivals like the Mercedes GLA and the Audi Q3, though. Even more surprising is the amount of headroom. It’s good everywhere, even with the optional panoramic sunroof equipped. Normally, glass rooves steal an inch or so of space from those in the rear – but there’s no such issue in the XC40.

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Boot space and storage

Volvo quotes two boot space figures. There are 452 litres of space if you fill the XC40’s boot up to the glass line and 578 litres if you pack it up to the roof. Fold the rear bench flat and the amount of maximum available space increases to 1,328 litres. That’s large, but fairly average for the class – the Mercedes GLA has a 495-litre boot, while the Range Rover Evoque can swallow 591 litres.

Volvo has thought carefully about packaging, though. The XC40’s boot has a low load lip and it’s a good square shape with minimal intrusion from the wheel arches and light clusters. That makes it easy to pack. There’s also a handy storage area under the boot floor, which is useful for hiding the charging cables for the previously available plug-in hybrid and all-electric XC40 Recharge models. Unlike a lot of cars in this class, the PHEV model’s battery pack doesn’t rob eat into the boot, either.

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Interior storage is up there with the best in the class. There are loads of intelligent solutions dotted around the cabin, such as slots next to the steering wheel for storing credit cards, a foldaway hook under the glovebox for hanging shopping and door bins that are big enough to hold a laptop and large water bottle. All this makes the cabin look tidy, even when you’ve got a family to carry.

Is it easy to park?

Reasonably so, but we’d suggest you jump up to the mid-range Plus specification if you can afford it, as it comes with front parking sensors and a rear-view camera as standard. Rear visibility isn’t great, as the XC40’s thick rear screen pillars block a lot of your vision. You can spend your way out this problem by upgrading to Ultimate which gets a 360-degree camera, although the image isn’t the sharpest.

Plus and up also gets a set of proximity sensors which register how far your car’s sides are from nearby obstacles. They work in crawling traffic, too, which is particularly handy when threading through narrow lanes in motorway roadworks.

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Safety

Here’s where Volvo gets into its stride. The XC40 scored a full five stars in its 2018 Euro NCAP crash test, with an impressive 97% score in the adult occupant protection category. It also scored 87% in the child occupant category, with the testers finding no significant injuries on any dummies in both the frontal and lateral impact tests.

Volvo made the XC40’s body and chassis very good at absorbing crashes. The company also fitted the car with a veritable arsenal of driver assistance technology, including autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assist, intelligent speed limit assist, traffic sign recognition and a full complement of airbags, including a driver’s knee airbag and side pelvis airbag.

Most of this equipment is available on rivals, though – and that’s simply not good enough for safety-obsessed Volvo. So, the company went one step further. The XC40 also features a system called run-off road mitigation, which can detect when the vehicle is about spear into the verge and adjust the brakes and steering to prevent it.

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The firm’s semi-autonomous Pilot Assist system can occasionally hold the car too far over to the left-hand side of the lane on the motorway and is sometimes flustered by slip roads. In such an instance, you may need to monitor the steering so that the car doesn’t turn off the motorway, but it works well for the most part. You’ll need Ultimate trim to get it, though.

Watch the Volvo XC40 Euro NCAP crash test video