2015 Volvo S60: Car Seat Check

After an update for 2014, Volvo’s sedan gets a new powertrain and some additional safety features for 2015. Although the S60 blurs the line between compact and midsize, the sedan easily accommodated two child-safety seats in our Car Seat Check, with ample room and accessible Latch anchors.

More Car Seat Checks

How many car seats fit in the second row? Two

What We Like

• The two sets of Latch anchors in the outboard seats are easy to connect to because they’re not set too deeply in the seat bight.
• The rear-facing convertible installed easily, and the front passenger seat did not need to be moved forward.
• In forward-facing mode, the convertible seat fit well and was also easy to install, but parents should pay close attention to the outboard head restraints. They’re fixed unless you power flip them down with a button located near the driver; because they’re fixed in the upright position, they may push some forward-facing car seats and boosters forward on the seat. There’s also no space under the head restraint to feed the top tether strap through, so we went around the head restraint to connect to the tether anchor.

What We Don’t

• The rear-facing infant-safety seat was easy to install, but the front passenger seat had to be moved up to make room for it; taller passengers will need more legroom to be comfortable.
• The booster fit nicely on the S60’s bolstered seat, but the buckles are on short stalks; kids will have trouble grasping them.

Grading Scale

A: Plenty of room for the car seat and the child; doesn’t impact driver or front-passenger legroom. Easy to find and connect to Latch and tether anchors. No fit issues involving head restraint or seat contouring. Easy access to the third row.  

B: Plenty of room. One fit or connection issue. Some problems accessing third row when available.

C: Marginal room. Two fit or connection issues. Difficult to access third row when available.

D: Insufficient room. Two or more fit or connection issues.

F: Does not fit or is unsafe.

About Cars.com’s Car Seat Checks

Editors Jennifer Geiger and Jennifer Newman are certified child safety seat installation technicians.

For the Car Seat Check, we use a Graco SnugRide 30 infant-safety seat, a Britax Marathon convertible seat and Graco TurboBooster seat.  The front seats are adjusted for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The three child seats are installed in the second row. The booster seat sits behind the driver’s seat, and the infant and convertible seats are installed behind the front passenger seat.

We also install the forward-facing convertible in the second row’s middle seat with the booster and infant seat in the outboard seats to see if three car seats will fit; a child sitting in the booster seat must be able to reach the seat belt buckle. If there’s a third row, we install the booster seat and a forward-facing convertible. To learn more about how we conduct our Car Seat Checks, go here.

Parents should also remember that they can use the Latch system or a seat belt to install a car seat, and that Latch anchors have a weight limit of 65 pounds, including the weight of the child and the weight of the seat itself.

Cars.com photos by Evan Sears