As we had written many times before road testing the XC60, what made a great-handling mid-sized SUV was an evasive and complicated thing to define.
In outright terms, the answer may simply have been ‘a Porsche Macan’ – but for those who wanted the comfort, isolation, versatility, space and convenience that most cars of this type afforded (and that, in many cases, the Porsche did not), that answer was as good as useless.
However you prefered to define that idea, few would have expected the XC60 to set the class standard on handling dynamism – so perhaps few would care that it didn’t. But we couldn’t overlook the shortcomings of the car’s suspension and steering on that basis.
In air-suspended form and on the R-Design trim’s 19in alloy wheels, the XC60 was a car that fell between two stools, providing a driving experience particularly worthy of commendation for neither its ride nor its handling.
It was a dynamically competent car and felt as secure as anyone could want a Volvo to be. But the ride was excitable and hollow over poorer surfaces and sharper-edged bumps, the steering was overly light and remote and the handling was slightly mushy, unresponsive and lacking in balance and bite, even by SUV benchmarks.
In some of those ways, we imagined the car was precisely as Volvo wanted it to be and as many owners would prefer it, but not in all of them. The XC60’s occasionally clunky ride was perhaps its most disappointing dynamic blight and the one you may be least forgiving of in both an SUV and a Volvo.
The air suspension did a reasonable job of suppressing surface roar, but presented with an averagely testing ridge or edge to deal with, it thumed and sometimes almost crashed. It was a criticism we made of all air-sprung Volvos sharing this platform, but it was more notable here than anywhere.
After that, we bemoaned the fact that the XC60’s Dynamic driving mode didn’t do a better job of producing much of a sporting driving experience (body control ranged from decent downwards), admitting the same caveat with which this section started: that, in all likelihood, an owner wouldn’t care. We simply couldn’t pretend that we didn’t.