• Vast interior with seating for seven
• Huge boot in five-seat mode
• Easy to configure the cabin, plus ample storage

How much space is there?

Lots. Which is sort of the point of a car like this, but even so the XC90’s practicality is exceptional. There’s more than enough room for five adults and a huge amount of luggage, but furthermore carrying seven adults isn’t entirely unrealistic. The rearmost seats are only really comfortable for people below five feet seven inches, but on shorter journeys larger adults won’t feel particularly uncomfortable.

The second row of seats slides forwards and back, but also reclines, so it’s easy enough to get comfortable back there too. One interesting feature here is the optional booster seat for children, which is nicely built into the middle row, meaning you don’t always have to carry around child seats.

All of the rear seats will fold down individually, unlocking countless storage and passenger carrying options. In the boot there’s also a couple of bag hooks along with a very useful feature – a flap which serves to keep objects hemmed in when you don’t have to carry a whole boot’s worth of luggage.

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You’ve got myriad useful features such as cupholders (for all three rows) and hooks to hang your jacket on. There are several cubbies and an air-conditioned glovebox which is opened via a button on the centre console. This makes a fantastically pleasing mechanical sound; another mark of quality.

All of that space inside does come at a price – the XC90 is a big old car to pilot around town, and it feels it at times. The high driving position does help with visibility though, but there’s only so much you can do to disguise the car’s heft.

Boot space and storage

In five-seat mode, the XC90’s boot is vast, and all models come with an electric tailgate, making access effortless. In this form, space on offer is a generous 640 litres in the T8 and 680 in the B5, while even with seven seats in place, there’s 302 litres of space (B5) or 262 litres (T8) – about the same as a small family hatchback.

Fold all the seats down and total volume (measured to the roof) is a whopping 1,856 litres in the B5 or 1,816 in the T8.

Is it easy to park?

The good news is that standard-fit parking sensors and a reversing camera help (plus the big mirrors), but we’d suggest upgrading to the 360-degree camera setup that gives you full visibility around the car.

The cameras are high-resolution and really help squeeze the XC90 into smaller spaces.

Safety

• Safety is a particular strong point for Volvo
• Huge list of standard safety and driver assistance tech
• Should provide a lot of peace of mind for drivers

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Volvo is a brand famous for building safe cars, and the XC90 does not disappoint.

Euro NCAP awarded it a five-star safety rating (of course) but that’s only the start of the story.

Standard kit includes:

• Low-speed automatic braking
• Distance alert
• City Safety – pedestrian, cyclist and large animal detection with autonomous emergency braking
• Lane-departure warning
• Traffic sign recognition
• Whiplash prevention system for the front seats
• Stability and traction control systems
• Isofix child seat lashing points on the outer second row seats
• Alarm
• Keyless entry
• Locking glovebox
• Child locks for rear doors
• Automatic headlight levelling
• First aid kit and a warning triangle

A cocktail of high-strength steels are employed in the body structure, while the seats feature a clever system that will mitigate spinal compression in the event of an accident.

The car will also sense when it’s about to leave the road and will prepare for the worst by tightening the seat belts for seven seconds. There’s also a system that will automatically brake at intersections if the car detects an incoming vehicle about to impact.

There’s also a vast array of optional safety kit including blind spot warning, a head-up display and the Intellisafe Pro package, which nets you:

• Adaptive cruise control
• Lane-keeping aid
• Rear collision mitigation – a system which prepares the car for being rear-ended by flashing the indicators to alert the following driver and tightening the seatbelts
• Queue Assist, which is a low-speed autonomous driving system which uses the adaptive cruise control to stop and go in traffic

The optional Family Pack bundles the integrated booster cushion on the centre seat base in the second row with powered rear child locks and integrated sun blinds for the rear doors. We should also mention that any new XC90 will be limited to 112mph, regardless of how powerful it is.

Watch: Volvo XC90 Euro NCAP safety test video