The 2025 Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar Is the Performance SUV No One Knows About

This is a new 2025 Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar engineered and it’s a performance SUV, but it’s also a Volvo, but it has more power than any new gas powered Porsche Macan, but it has a starting price of around $77,000. These are all things that don’t usually go together, but today I’m going to make sense of it all. I’m going to review the XC60 Polestar Engineered and I’ll show you all of its quirks and features. [Applause] [Music] All right, time for the quirks and features of the XC60 T8 Polestar Engineered. Starting with the basics. Now, the entrylevel base model XC60 starts around $48,000, which is very competitive among compact midsize luxury SUVs. But this one, the Polestar engineered, has a starting price of just under $77,000. Now, that’s big money for a Volvo SUV in this segment, but this car delivers some impressive stuff. Under the hood is a four-cylinder engine that is turbocharged and supercharged. And it’s a plug-in hybrid, and it’s good for 455 horsepower, which like I said is more power than any new gas powered Porsche Macan on sale right now. Yes, even the S and the GTS. This Volvo has more power. It also has about 525 lb feet of torque and all-wheel drive as standard sends this from 0 to 60 in about 4.2 seconds, which is legitimately fast for an SUV like this. And just in case you also want some efficient to go with your fast, the EPA says this has a fully electric range of about 36 mi that you can go before the gasoline engine kicks in. Now, beyond the power and the stronger acceleration, the Polestar upgrades to this XC60 are surprisingly subtle. Actually, the most notable and obvious is the wheels. The Polestar has these big 22in wheels. That’s pretty serious for a Volvo SUV, especially an XC60. And around them, you have Pirelli P0 summer tires. They’re serious about performance when they’re not put in all seasons on an all-wheel drive Volvo crossover. You also have extra-large brakes, especially in front, as you can see. And those are wrapped in these gold yellow brake calipers. That’s kind of Polestar’s distinctive color and distinctive touch. In fact, that Polestar color appears in a few places. The valve stem caps are gold in Polestar engineered models. And you also have that gold carried into the seat belts in the interior, reminding you even on the inside that you have the special Polestar model. Now, still on the wheels in order to have these big wheels and wider tires for more grip. This XC60 also has fender extensions. As you can see, slightly bulged out fender extensions to cover up the wheels, both front and rear, which also gives you the clue that this is the Polestar model. But aside from that stuff, there’s really nothing about this car that tells you it’s the high performance version of the XC60. It’s a very subtle performance upgrade, despite the fact that it’s significantly more power and better acceleration than every other XC60. You do have badging, but it’s this tiny little badge in back. You can see barely readable. It says Polestar engineered and you have the same badge up front on the grill. That’s basically it. Big wheels, a little badge, and some fender extensions is all you’re broadcasting to people. This really hearkens back to an era when performance vehicles were subtle and they let the power do the talking. And there’s actually something kind of cool about that. And the other distinctive touch that these Polestar engineered models have is adjustable suspension. But interestingly, the adjustment is manual in front. To adjust the suspension, you got to open up the hood. And you can see this is your little dial that you can use to choose exactly the firmness level where you want the suspension. That’s what you got to do in front. In back, you actually have to jack up the car and then go into the rear wheel well and the suspension adjuster is in there. I have a suspicion not too many XC60 people will be doing that, but manually adjustable Olan suspension in this car if that’s something that you’re interested in adjusting, giving it a little bit more performance chops, I suppose. Now, since we’re under the hood, one rather interesting quirk of this car and other XC60 models, you can see the plastic engine cover, except it’s not plastic. When you push on it, it bends in. It’s actually a foam, sort of like a rubbery foam. And Volvo’s been using this on their cars for a while. They told me ages ago it was for pedestrian safety. So, a pedestrian impact doesn’t hit the plastic cover, obviously, break that instantly and then hit the engine block. Instead, there’s like a little bit of give there to cushion the impact, which is interesting to see and kind of cool. Now, as far as other things worth talking about, especially outside the car, there’s really not all that much to say except that it looks good, which is particularly impressive because this model of the XC60 came out for the 2018 model year. It’s been on sale for seven or eight years now. It’s getting old by most standards and yet it still looks nice. Good proportions, nice, simple, clean design. It was refreshed for 24, but generally kept the same look and it’s still good. And that speaks to Volvo’s design language, which frankly is just fantastic. Volvo does a great job of designing cars for long product runs, and the cars look good for the whole design. They’re simply attractive, and this one is no exception. Still looks good even after this time. And it’s the same deal on the inside. Again, this interior hasn’t been redesigned since the XC60 was fully redesigned back in 18. They’ve made some little touches to keep it fresh, but it’s largely the same interior, and it largely looks great. It’s still a nice, simple, clean, elegant, attractive design that looks really nice. It’s a well-laidout interior. Everything looks good. By skipping some of the trappings of like the latest and greatest in design language, Volvo allows their designs to last for longer and still stay nice. And that’s certainly the case in here. And you’ve got nice materials. You can see nice touches everywhere. Everything looks good, feels nice. There’s nice leather all over the place with good stitching, the dashboard, the seats, everything looks good. And that’s especially true of the shifter, which is a crystal shifter. It looks cool. It feels cool to touch. And it’s made by Orifors, which is this company that primarily makes crystal stuff. And it even includes their logo, which is a seal. Not too many cars have a seal on their shifter, but this one does. Now, with that said, in Volvo’s quest for an elegant, minimalist design, there are some misses in this interior. For example, there’s no wireless charging pad in this car. Apparently, the XC60 had it in the past, but it’s certainly gone now, and it doesn’t have one, which is disappointing. That would have been a nice feature to include. The other big miss is the climate control, which is almost entirely integrated into the central screen, and frankly, the integration can be a bit clunky. Not only do you have to tap the screen and then tap elsewhere for more stuff, but just turning on the heated seats requires two separate taps. one to pull up the menu, one to turn on the heated seat as opposed to a simple button push on so many other cars. Again, Volvo was going for elegant, simplistic, minimalist in here. They did a good job, but that means you lose some of these pretty frequently used controls to a screen and menus. And that’s also especially true of the drive mode situation in this car. Virtually every vehicle I’m in, the drive mode is just a little dial you twist or roll or turn. But in this car, to change the drive mode, you got to go into the screen, press the settings button, believe it or not, then tap driving at the top, and only then are your drive modes displayed at the top. That’s particularly frustrating in the Polestar model because you’re probably going to want to be in the Polestar performance drive mode pretty frequently since you paid up for the extra Polestarness. But every time you start the car, it goes back to a basic drive mode. And every time you want to go into Polestar, you got to go settings, driving, drive modes rather than just flipping a switch. Now, with that said, there are many things that I like about this infotainment screen. Probably the biggest is that it’s a vertically oriented screen like a smartphone. So, you’re already coming at this with a pretty good idea of how it’s going to be laid out and how to use it. And there’s even a home button at the very center in the bottom like the old iPhones used to have. Anytime you’re confused, you’re deep in some menu structure, just press that button to go home. It goes right home and it’s very intuitive. That’s excellent. And the camera system has some real benefits, too. One is how easy it is to pull it up. Instead of going deep into some menu, you just tap this little button in the corner with the camera on it, and the camera system comes up. And the thing that I especially love here is that Volvo was able to figure out how to make their 360 top- down camera take up the whole screen. I’ve been in a lot of cars where this 360 top- down camera has a portion of the screen. It’s too small to be really useful. But here, because it’s a vertical screen, and because of the way they’ve designed it, it’s the full screen, which makes parking especially easy when you’re using that top- down camera. Of course, this system also comes in a lot of familiar apps. It includes Google Maps, which is obviously nice to see, and also Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And just generally, it’s easy to use, responsive to your touch. Overall, a nice well-designed infotainment system, although the climate controls, some people may not like having them integrated in there, which makes sense. Now, I cannot say the same positive things about the gauge cluster, and I think the gauge cluster screen is one example where this car shows its age a little bit. You do have a full screen gauge cluster here, but it’s not really configurable. The map is in the center and then vehicle information on the sides that can’t really be changed. You can turn off the map, but it’s not replaced by anything. And you can pull up a trip odometer, but that’s about it. You can’t have your music displayed here, your phone. You can’t have it show two things at once. So many other cars do a better job of this gauge cluster screen and its configurability. And it’s disappointing to see that Volvo has a miss here and not as much information or configurability as you’d probably want. And beyond the tech in this car, interestingly enough, there are some rather cool touches, some quirks and features, if you will. For instance, turning the car on is not just a simple button press. Instead, this is the engine start stop, and it’s a switch that you twist to the right like an old school key, but obviously it’s a switch. And it’s kind of cool and kind of satisfying to make that twist and turn on and off the car. I like that they did that. I wish they do it in all their other cars, too. Another interesting control is for the sunroof. You go up to this ceiling control area. There’s no switch or dial here. Instead, it’s a panel where you slide your finger and the sunroof will slide corresponding to the direction you’ve slid your finger. To open the sunroof, to open the sun shade, just slide and it opens or closes, which is kind of cool. Another thing I love about this car and a lot of other Volvos, a little hidden secret is you can fold in the exterior mirrors by pushing the left and right mirror control at the same time. You push them at once and the mirrors automatically fold in, which you might want to do when the car is parked to make sure it doesn’t get hit by some passing rogue vehicle. And another interesting quirk of this car on the windshield on the driver’s side at the base you can see there’s a little clip mounted here. Volvo has included this clip in a lot of its vehicles over a lot of years and its intended purpose is for like parking tickets. If you pay for instance at a parking meter and they give you a little printed ticket, you have a little spot where you can display it so the parking meter attendant can see the ticket instead of trying to look for it on your dashboard. Same deal with like a parking pass in a parking garage. That’s where you can stick it so it’s easily displayed. That’s a very cool and practical idea, having that little clip on the windshield so that you can easily display something like that. And one last interesting quirk up front here. You can see on the seat, very subtly stitched into the seat is a little flag, which is of course the Swedish flag, reminding you that this car is indeed Swedish. Same deal over on the passenger side of the dashboard. Integrated very subtly into this trim is the Swedish flag. Again, reminding you of the Swedishness. Again, a little touch, but they’re proud. They want to be Swedish. They want you to know and they think you want to know too. And next up, we move on to the back seat in the XC60 Polestar Engineered, which is probably pretty similar to the back seat in other XC60 models. And honestly, it is surprisingly roomy back here. This is a compact crossover bordering on midsize, but it certainly isn’t large like the XC90. And yet, there is good space in back for an adult. I’m 6’4 and I sit back here with no problems. Knee room, leg room, headroom. It’s wellsized this car, which is pretty surprising again considering the older design. It hasn’t grown in a while and yet there’s good space back here front and rear in the XC60. Unless you are the middle seat passenger, in which case you are screwed because of the giant hump in the floor for the drive line. There’s no way you’re going to get your feet around that. There’s not enough space for a middle seat person to realistically sit in this car for any longer trips. But good space on the outboard seats, surprisingly for a vehicle in this size class. As for amenities back here, there are a few heated rear seats is nice to have. That’s a nice touch. But you don’t get central rear climate vents. Now, you do have climate vents on the pillars sort of next to the front seats, which is helpful. But those central climate vents blow more air exactly where you want it. And frankly, most other rivals have them. Disappointing not to see it here. Not a huge deal, but worth pointing out. The other interesting thing to note back here is the device charging situation. You have a little circular device charging port, which implies a cigarette lighter style outlet, but you open it up and it’s actually two USBC ports, which again kind of show off this car’s aid. I’m sure when it first came out that was a cigarette lighter style port and then they just morphed it into USBC, but kept the same circular design. Still, it works and it’s great and it charges devices. Also worth pointing out back here the cup holder situation. You don’t get cup holders in the back seats in this car unless you fold down the center armrest. And then when you do that, you can see cup holders appear. But if you want to have three across seating back here, that means no cup holders. And finally, we move on to the cargo area in the XC60. Pop open the power tailgate. You can see back here the cargo space is surprisingly generous. And I say surprisingly, especially because rear seat room was also surprisingly generous. Usually, especially in this segment of the market, you have to make a choice between extra cargo space or extra rear seat space. Here, they do both. And in an older vehicle design, this car was really welldesigned and well executed when it was new, and it’s still going well based on that. And if you need extra storage space back here, there’s a little bit under the floor. You can lift up this handle and you can see a little extra storage here, I guess, for the charging cables or other stuff if you want it. And there’s a little extra storage off to the side in this netting area, but nothing huge. Still good cargo space back here. And one interesting XC60 touch back here, you can see in the middle of the seat back for the rear seats, there’s an opening. That would be for a pass through for longer, taller items like skis or ski poles. Most crossovers in this world don’t have the pass through because the seats fold down the figure you don’t need it. But here you get both. The seats fold down and you have the pass through which some people might find really really useful. It’s nice to see. Now there are a couple of drawbacks in this cargo area. One is there’s no latches to fold the seats in the cargo area. Most other rivals have this. In this car you got to go around to the seat itself and fold it down which adds just a little bit of annoyance and inconvenience. Also worth pointing out, there’s no household style power outlet anywhere in this car. By this point, most rivals have a household outlet, at least in the cargo area, if not in the back seats. Here, you do get a cigarette lighter style outlet back here, but obviously not as useful for most stuff. And it’d be nice to have at least one household power outlet in the car somewhere. But generally speaking, a pretty nice cargo area. And one other interesting trick worth noting about the XC60, the badge. You can see the six in XC60 is simply the nine in XC90 flipped over. And so when Volvo makes the XC60 and the XC90, they don’t need to make a separate badge. They just turn over the existing number, which I’m sure saves them something like 38 cents per car. That is some good Swedish thinking. Anyway, all that aside, I’m most curious about how this drives. A high-performance, fast, powerful SUV from Volvo. Let’s get it out on the road and see. All right, driving the XC60 T8 all-wheel drive, Polestar engineered. It’s a long name, but let’s just call it the fast XC60. And I got to say, it is indeed fast. Like legitimately and truly, this is a fast vehicle. 0 to 60 in the low 4 second range is nothing to scoff at. Um, and this is a seriously powerful car. The transmission is smooth and gets shifts down pretty quickly. And once you floor it, and once you’re in polestar mode, which as you saw takes quite a while to find, but once you get in there and do it, you’re going, even though this is a Volvo, it’s a little bit, it messes with your mind a little bit. It doesn’t feel like it should be the case. Um, but it is in fact the case. You are in a Volvo and you’re driving at this rate of acceleration and it’s delivering this level of performance. It’s actually all pretty impressive. Now, the other reason why it doesn’t feel like it should be true is because a lot of the rest of the car doesn’t entirely match up to the acceleration level. So, this acceleration is on par with, you know, Macan GTS and better than Audi SQ5 and up there with the AMG GLC, the 43, better than that. probably this is a fast car by anybody’s standards, especially in this compact luxury SUV segment. But the drawback is it’s just not the sportiest vehicle. Aside from that, I actually find the chassis to be surprisingly good. And I say surprisingly because uh my wife had an XC60 for like 6 years, and I never knew it could be awakened like this. It’s actually not so bad from a body roll and predictability and like speed of changing directions perspective. It actually is pretty good at all of that stuff. It does a really decent job. Your drawbacks come in probably two other areas. Number one is the steering, which is fine, but not great. It feels numb. Um, it’s relatively quick to steer, but it doesn’t give you an enormous amount of feedback despite the quickness, and it feels fairly numb generally. And so, you certainly do not have the steering feel of a Porsche Macan in this car. The other drawback I I I can see is that even though the chassis is pretty excellent and the car actually does change directions fairly quickly and fairly well to get there, you end up putting up with a substantially harsh ride. This car is on 22-in wheels. The dampers, although they’re adjustable, they are manually adjustable, like I mentioned, and so you can’t really change that. And when you go into polestar mode, it gives you this excellent acceleration and really lights up the the powertrain, but it also really robs you of ride quality. And so it ends up being rougher than you’d want from a Volvo is what I would say. Now, I want to say with that said, there are some real benefits here beyond some of the stuff that I’ve mentioned before. The interior quality is excellent. Like I mentioned, the other nice thing about this car, and it’s something that’s really worth pointing out if you’re in this space, it doesn’t show off. And so I this one of the reasons I got it uh for my wife years ago is that you can have this kind of luxury experience like you would in a you know Land Rover, an entry- level Land Rover or a BMW or a Mercedes, but you’re not bragging to everybody. Volvo is not a brand that people look at and think of as bragging. Volvo is a brand that people look at and think of as restrained. And so you get the same experience, but you don’t have to have sort of the ego and the and the just the in-your-face that comes with driving a BMW or something like that. And there will be people who get this car because they want the performance, they want the acceleration of a Macan or an X3, but they just don’t want to have a BMW or Porsche. And I get that and I think that’s totally reasonable. And and I think that this car’s design lends itself nicely to that as well. It’s a subtle looking car. It’s a subtle uh brand and yet you really do get a nice highquality vehicle in here. So to sum up, this is clearly a car for kind of a different type of performance luxury SUV buyer, I would say. If you want something that’s a little bit different, a little more subtle, a little more like the thinking man’s version, something that doesn’t show off as much. This car delivers a lot of the great performance those do without much of that stuff. It doesn’t have necessarily the dynamics or the the steering feel, etc., but it’s not so bad and it’s nice to drive. Its primary drawback really being that it’s you’re paying the same as those other brands, BMW and Mercedes and Porsche, etc. And so that’s a little bit of a tough sell. And so that’s the new Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar engineered. It may not be an X3M or a Macan Turbo, but if you want a nice SUV that flies under the radar, but still has excellent performance, this is the one. Everybody will think you’re in a nice, safe, regular Volvo until you floor it and then you’re gone. Anyway, now it’s time to give this XC60 a Doug score. And the Doug score is here. 61 out of 100, which puts the XC60 here against some rivals. It actually ties the Mercedes AMG GLC 43, mainly because the Volvo is a bit faster and I think it’s a bit better looking. Though the GLC wins for handling and overall value given the Volvo’s high price tag and aging design and technology. This is a cool SUV, the XC60T8, but it has limited appeal. Most people who want a performance SUV don’t think of Volvo first or second or even at all. Nonetheless, if you do, you might be pleasantly surprised. [Applause] [Music]

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This is the new 2025 Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar Engineered and it’s a performance SUV that has more power than any new gas-powered Porsche Macan on sale today. It also has a sticker price of around $77,000. Today I’m reviewing this fast XC60, and I’ll show you the many quirks and features. I’m also going to get behind the wheel and show you what it’s like to drive.

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CHAPTER:
00:00 THIS…
00:39 CARS & BIDS!!!
01:17 Pricing
01:48 Turbocharged, Supercharged, Plug-In Hybrid
02:42 Polestar Upgrades
04:40 Adjustable Suspension
05:28 Foam Engine Cover
05:58 Old, But Nice Styling
06:46 Interior Style
07:54 Interior Drawbacks
09:31 Infotainment
10:57 Disappointing Gauge Cluster
11:41 Cool Interior Touches
14:09 Rear Seating
16:13 Cargo Area
18:51 Driving Experience
23:09 Final Thoughts
23:39 DougScore