Video: 2018 Volvo XC60 Review: First Impressions

om's best of 2016 car overall and the XC60 seems to be nearly as opulent, just in a smaller package. We'll get into it starting up front here with styling. A lot of familiar cues if you've seen the XC90, just kind of this very low bold grill here. Volvo's Thor's Hammer LED headlights kind of snaking out to the outside here. A little bit lower than the prior generation XC60, actually 0.7 inches less ground clearance, Volvo tells us, but about three inches more overall length. A lot of that goes to help out rear leg room, though the XC60 is still considerably smaller than the XC90. Now the prior generation XC60 had pretty good cabin materials, and this redesign here appears to build on that. A lot of themes you see from the XC90 here, starting with this giant touchscreen in the center controls most functions here. It's a nine inch Sensus touchscreen. It actually is standard. There's an available 12 inch virtual instrument panel that can also sort of accompany it. A little bit faster processing here for the new model year, and that's important because that was kind of a feature that bugged us a little bit in our long term XC90, just in terms of kind of some of the slow processing speeds of the system. Really nice detailing otherwise here. Things like driftwood themed, real wood trimmed real metal around you. There's just a level of consistency, when you even go down the doors and stuff. Just in terms of soft touch things that really, even a lot of other luxury SUVs kind of cheap out at certain areas, not the XC60, from the looks of the car here at the Auto Show. and you don't necessarily sacrifice utility to get there like you do in some SUVs. Still lots of storage space here along the center console. There's a button here that can fold the rear head restraints to help out with visibility looking back. So plenty of practicality still in play. Now, again, another inch and a half of rear leg room here thanks to the extra length in the new XC60. Plenty of room here. That's where I'd sit to drive. I'm six feet tall. The seat could sit a little bit higher off the ground, but not too bad overall. Now, Volvo says all of the XC90's features, all of its luxury features, you can still get in the XC60. Things from an air suspension to massaging front seats to four zone climate control, the list just goes on and on and on. There's even a 400 horsepower T8 version that's a plugin hybrid, actually, gets from zero to 60 in 4.9 seconds. Very, very quick for an XC60. All of that will be on sale sometime later on in 2017, so stay tuned for more.