XC60 MPG, reliability as considering buying

[BEJ]

Did a trip to Italy through France and Switzerlans last year in my 2015 D4 SE lux FWD auto and never suffered any back problems. ( I have 3 squashed discs which can be a real pain in the ar$e).
I love this car and regularly get 50+ mpg on a run and over the last 850 miles of mixed motoring I returned 43.7 mpg.
The 8 speed gearbox is a peach.

[organgrinder]

Hi.

I've had 7 Volvos and my last three were XC60 D5 - SE Lux Autos - so nearly 10 years in XC 60s! Current one is a 16 plate
Magnificent motors. I get 36mpg solo and 30 towing. Goes like stink. I have been a very happy bunny with mine. Tiny warranty issues - such as a bit of flaking paint on a rear bumper!! Volvo replaced the whole lot and didn't repaint. Considered a D4 but 'vanning swung it for us and all have been D5s.
Dog loves it too!
Don't like the 'new' one. Looks too brutish for me and its expensive!!.
Do watch however the road tax issue with post April 2017 (not sure of dates - check this before you buy!!)

Must dash!

[cardiomike]

i'm on a 2009 2wd 2.4d 5cyl at 141k miles-and she drives beautifully-bought her with a full volvo service history at 114k,keep the faith!

[chrisfr]

I have a d5 auto. It gave 6.4 liters to 100 kms which is around the mid fourties. The d5 lump is quite reliable. Having a higher bhp actually seems to reduce the mpg. Dont ask me why , its all greek to me.
The real issue is the heavy volvo reliance on electronics which can play up from time to time from posts on this forum. I would also make sure the aux belts are changed regularly to prevent them taking out the timing belt. I preferred the se lux to the r design as the latter i found a bit of a teeth rattling drive. The headlights do not comply with eu regs even though vovlo insist they do. You will need lens covers or certainly in france you will get problems with the boys in blue. The beam points to the lh curb and flairs up as well. You won't get flashed but a quick check will be all it takes to get a fine. I have active bending headlights and these are more expensive to change to right hand traffic than donald trumps mastercard bill. Very comfortable cars. I like!

[Considered1]

I’ve driven them all. If you are going Auto (and I wouldn’t have anything else On a Volvo) I found the new 8 speed in the 2.0 fwd D4 much more refined than the outgoing 6 speed in the old 2.4

If you really need AWD then your choice of engine and auto box is confined but if you are not going off road then some all seasons tyres will get you anywhere you need to go.

Seats are all different too so test all variants Basic SE, Basic RDesign, SE Lux, RDesign Lux.

Mpg in the D5’s with a heavy foot can struggle to get 30 whereas the 2.0 is better on fuel and you shouldn’t get less than 40.

One other deciding factor when I had mine you couldn’t remote start a D5 with Volvo On Call app, but you can an 8 speed Auto D4 from MY15 onwards..

[NigelDay]

Originally Posted by chrisfr

The headlights do not comply with eu regs even though vovlo insist they do. You will need lens covers or certainly in france you will get problems with the boys in blue. The beam points to the lh curb and flairs up as well. You won't get flashed but a quick check will be all it takes to get a fine. I have active bending headlights and these are more expensive to change to right hand traffic than donald trumps mastercard bill.

This is very strange / worrying.
I have ABL / Active High Beam. When in Europe, I 'simply' change the settings to LHD traffic in the menu. It retains this setting until I change it on my return to the UK.
I did once see a new top-spec UK Range Rover on the ferry and was perplexed as to why they had fitted plastic beam benders. I can only assume they had the same sort of ABL / Active High Beam (they were not LEDs) and this might have been the reason for the stick-on deflectors.

[chrisfr]

You are absolutely correct. With active main beams you can do that. With active dipped beams you cant. I have the latter. Volvo told me that the latter complied, yet it failed a french mot when i was reregistering it in france for the reasons given in my other post. You wont have a problem. The problem is volvo have no fix for the active dipped neams like mine. They made things worse by removing the headlight level adjustment wheel on my model which could solve the problem quite easily.
While i am at it, the speedo does not show kph except for a pathetic little display about the size of a 5 p coin on the rhs of the digital display accessed by turning the left hand stalk. I had to do a low tech fix with stick on numbers from letraset stuck onto the speedo. You can change all the other units to metric, but not the speedo. All this from a car that has the computing power of the european space station. The swedish designer who designed that must have been on the pi ss the night before. Its like buying a table from ikea with out the screws to hold it together. Volvo customer services cannot even tell me which model is fitted with what feature! I worked all this out myself. Why cant they?

[1monkey600]

Originally Posted by chrisfr

You are absolutely correct. With active main beams you can do that. With active dipped beams you cant. I have the latter. Volvo told me that the latter complied, yet it failed a french mot when i was reregistering it in france for the reasons given in my other post. You wont have a problem. The problem is volvo have no fix for the active dipped neams like mine. They made things worse by removing the headlight level adjustment wheel on my model which could solve the problem quite easily.
While i am at it, the speedo does not show kph except for a pathetic little display about the size of a 5 p coin on the rhs of the digital display accessed by turning the left hand stalk. I had to do a low tech fix with stick on numbers from letraset stuck onto the speedo. You can change all the other units to metric, but not the speedo. All this from a car that has the computing power of the european space station. The swedish designer who designed that must have been on the pi ss the night before. Its like buying a table from ikea with out the screws to hold it together. Volvo customer services cannot even tell me which model is fitted with what feature! I worked all this out myself. Why cant they?

They probably failed the Controle Technique because the lights, even though they may be changed from RHD to LHD, or vice versa, (temporarily), are still specific items for the market, i.e a RHD car has lights that flick up on the left, while LHD cars have lights that flick up on the right.
On my xc70 I have to pull out the headlights and move a lever within the bulb housing to 'convert' them. All this does is blank out the 'flick' that shines at the kerb and leaves you a flat topped beam which means visibility is much reduced to the nearside, particularly above waist height.

I did mention it on another post you left but, in case you didn't see it, you can ask your dealer to change your principal speedo output to kph, instead of mph (with secondary then becoming mph). It is just a matter of changing software - I believe I was quoted 30-40 euro when I looked into taking my Belgian car back to UK for a couple of months. I guess it depends how often you take it back to UK.
In the end I opted to just activate the secondary display because, as standard, Volvo Belgium don't give you that option - it's a long story but took months to find out how to do that.

[AndyJudge]

I've got ABL & AHB & there's defo a setting for L/H drive use in the menu.

As mentioned I suspect the French MOT was failed as the lights were incorrect for France as the default was for RHD.

[chrisfr]

Just to clarify , volvo do two flavours of active beams, low and high. They are different set ups. The high abl have a software setting to select rh traffic for driving abroad and these would probably pass the french mot. The low abl do not have any setting for rh traffic. Why? Dont ask me. Ask volvo.