Seven years ago, after test-driving the Volkswagen Weiling station wagon, I wrote in the title of my article: more fun, more practical. Not long ago, I took a test drive of the Volvo V60, which once again made me feel the fun and practicality of a station wagon, and at the same time, I was impressed by its good performance in terms of safety.
Volvo V60 is a station wagon, the number of this model in the mainland is not very large, but the history is quite long, in terms of domestic production alone, as early as 1989, Guangzhou Peugeot introduced the Peugeot 505 SW8, and in 1992, Shanghai Volkswagen put into production Santana station wagon. Later, there were also Sail, Palio, Triumph, Ma 6, Junjie, and so on. In recent years, some manufacturers have deliberately given it a variety of new-looking names for marketing, hoping to gain attention.
No matter how the name changes, the essence is the same. A station wagon is a sedan that raises the luggage compartment of a sedan and connects it to the middle compartment, making the rear space more spacious and allowing you to carry more luggage and even turn the rear into a bed, making it more practical than a sedan. For example, the luggage compartment of the Golf has a volume of 380 litres, while the luggage compartment of the Golf wagon is 605 litres, and the folding rear seats can increase the volume to 1,620 litres. It can be seen that station wagons outperform sedans and hatchbacks in terms of practicality.
Compared with Europe and the United States, the mainland's models are relatively simple, and it has not been able to divide a sedan into a two-door model, a touring model, a convertible model and other styles. There are reasons for habits, as well as reasons for concepts, and there are reasons for the lack of rich content in car life. Although we have become a big country in automobile production and sales, many people are keen on saving money and cost-effectiveness. One of the most typical is that people who can afford to buy a car are reluctant to pay for parking, preferring to park their car on the side of the road around residential areas.
In fact, the Volvo V60 is not suitable for people who have to rack their brains to save even on parking fees. First of all, it is not a cheap car, it is only suitable for people with a certain amount of financial strength. Secondly, its theme is to enrich life, and it is only suitable for people who pay attention to the quality of life. Third, it puts a lot of effort into security, and it is only suitable for people who have a strong sense of security and are willing to spend money on it.
The test drive of Volvo V60, the main feeling is the joy of life, driving pleasure and safety guarantee, next, these three aspects of the content, one by one, to share with you.
One of the feelings: get more joy in life with it.
The basic property of a car is a tool. A sedan is mainly a means of riding, and in addition to riding, the station wagon is also a good means of carrying goods - the wide luggage compartment at the rear is its main advantage, and the carrying capacity is better than that of a sedan.
You see, four 24-inch trolley cases, which can be put in side by side, not only do they not exceed the height of the shutter, but there is also some rich space in the front and rear.
I tried it, and in this affluent space, it could fit 3 small hiking bags, or 2 20-inch trolley suitcases. In other words, a total of 6 trolley cases can be accommodated in the luggage compartment without exceeding the shutter.
The advantages brought by the spacious space, I have a personal experience during the test drive - in the recent Qingming Festival, my family of 4 large and 1 small, relying on it from Beijing to Beidaihe, spent a very happy holiday. At that time, the carriage was equipped with doll's safety seats, and the luggage compartment was full of the family's luggage and picnic gear. If a sedan or hatchback, it simply can't hold so many things.
Feeling 2: It can bring very good driving pleasure.
You might say that if you switch to an SUV, you can easily put all this luggage in it, right?
In the same class as the Volvo V60, there is the Volvo XC60, which I tested last year, and the length and width of the luggage compartment are very close to the V60, and the main advantage is the height, which is better than the V60, so it can accommodate five 26-inch trolley cases.
While everything is good, there will naturally be disadvantages.
When it comes to handling, sedans tend to outperform SUVs. The reason for this is simple: due to the low center of gravity, the cornering speed can be slightly higher, which makes for a nice driving pleasure.
As many of you probably know, sedans are the mainstream in Europe. If you want to get around every day, it's usually a hatchback, but if you want to play around, it's often a station wagon.
What you may not know is that on the European side, fast trains are the mainstream. The suburbs and highways are all on the upper edge of the speed limit, and then more or less exceeded, even in the continuous curves in the mountains, the speed of the car does not decrease at all. In the urban area, as soon as the green light is on, everyone steps on the accelerator deeply, and a large number of cars come out. Even if you've been standing on the side of the road all day, you're afraid you won't see a few slow trains.
Perhaps in order to satisfy this driving habit, most of the original European cars have a good chassis. This V60 is one of them.
Its front suspension is a double wishbone type, the rear suspension is a multi-link type, most of the components in the suspension are made of aluminum alloy, and the rear suspension relies on composite materials to act as coil springs, all of which play a role in improving handling performance.
If we use the outdated binary thinking of "soft" and "hard" to evaluate, its suspension performance is "hard", but it is by no means the "hard" of the hard seat of the train, but a kind of "hard" with rich texture. In fact, I feel comfortable with the car's vibration damping, which is just right for vibration filtering. At high speeds, the car has a sense of fit with the ground, and the stability performance is quite good.
The excellent performance of the chassis, coupled with the relatively quiet interior environment, and the more elaborate interior workmanship, is easy to associate with one word: class.
The comprehensive feeling brought by a 400,000-yuan car is often significantly different from that of a 200,000-yuan car, let alone a 100,000-yuan car. In this way, it is not to look down on economy cars. People's economic conditions are different, and different prices can meet different consumer needs.
Another manifestation of driving pleasure is power.
The power of the car is 2.0T + 8AT, supplemented by a 48-volt mild hybrid. If I had to sum up the driving experience in the least number of words, I would immediately think of it: plenty of power and a constant flow of power.
In terms of data alone, the specific power is 0.082 kW/kg, and the acceleration to 100 km/h is 6.8 seconds, both of which are considered excellent. And the subjective feeling in driving is probably better. The first is the initial acceleration, the throttle is not very light, but the response is agile, and the starting process is crisp, and the second is the acceleration in the middle and rear sections, which is very powerful, and the sense of power can last for a long time, and overtaking is a breeze.
When I drove from Beijing to Beidaihe, I had some regrets: two months ago, I traveled in Europe and rented a new car that had only been licensed for half a year. In the hills, whenever I go uphill, if there is a well-powered heavy truck in front of me, I can't catch up at all.
At that time, it was good to have a V60, and you could enjoy the speed to a great time.
The power performance is so good, in addition to the engine, the transmission also contributes. On the one hand, the two of them are quite perfectly matched - don't underestimate this, there are many cars in China, including best-selling cars, so far it is difficult to achieve a perfect match. On the other hand, I didn't notice any frustration in the shifting during the test drive, and I didn't experience it once.
As for the 48-volt mild hybrid, it can't be compared to a true hybrid, just a limited auxiliary. The biggest advantage is that the engine starts and stops very smoothly, and the vibration during start-up is almost not felt, and the second is that it contributes slightly to the smoothness of the start-up phase.
As for the engine speed, I recorded a speed of 80 km/h at about 1,400 rpm, 100 km/h at about 1,600 rpm, and 120 km/h at almost 2,000 rpm.
In the test drive, I drove it from Beijing to Beidaihe, and when I arrived at the hotel, the instrument showed that the whole journey lasted 3 hours and 44 minutes, and the average fuel consumption was 7.7 liters. If you deduct the departure phase (after starting, it took about 10 minutes to load the car, which is also included in the meter; after departure, the first few kilometers of crawling in residential areas, which took about 20 minutes), the door-to-door driving time should be 3 hours and 10 minutes.
A friend, who went to Beidaihe on the same day as us - he was forced to buy an electric car in 2018 because he couldn't shake the number - according to him, he left home at 7:43 in the morning and arrived at the hotel at 2:47 in the afternoon, the whole journey took 7 hours and 4 minutes. It stands to reason that his home is nearly 10 kilometers away from the entrance of the expressway, which is more advantageous than me, but it is still so slow, the reason is that one is to charge in the Hangu service area for nearly 1 hour on the way, and the other is to dare not drive the speed to 120 kilometers. Because, according to the instrument, at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour, the power consumption of 100 kilometers is about 17 kilowatt hours, and the speed of 120 kilometers per hour increases sharply to 27 kilowatt hours.
There is no doubt that electric vehicles at this stage are only suitable for short-distance driving, and the advantages are mainly in urban areas. And the station wagon is used for traveling, with a few minutes of filling up a tank of fuel, you can run seven or eight hundred kilometers, even if you drive the car to 130 kilometers (mainland), 140 kilometers (France) or 180 kilometers (Germany), even if you turn on the heating to the maximum, there are no scruples, there is no worries.
When I was traveling in Europe, I noticed that the high-speed service area there was also equipped with charging stations, but as far as I could see, all of them were idle. Only in urban charging piles can you occasionally see a few cars charging.
Feeling No. 3: Volvo's safety and security are well deserved.
When it comes to safety, no other automaker pays as much attention to it as Volvo. In fact, the driver assistance that electric cars are proud of today (they started calling it autonomous driving, and then changed to driver assistance to avoid liability) appeared in Volvo at least 10 years ago, but it was relatively naïve and misoperated at first, and now it is getting better and better.
The car I test-drove has Level 2 driving assistance, including front and rear radar, lane centering, traffic sign recognition, lane departure warning, forward collision warning, rear collision warning, reverse side warning, active braking, fatigue warning, full-speed adaptive cruise control, lane merging assist and 360-degree panoramic view.
There are two things that stand out to me about driver assistance.
First, when reversing, there was a bush behind the right, and the system thought that I was too close and issued a warning. I didn't care, so I ignored it, and the system then applied the brakes and stopped the car. I got out of the car to check and found that if I continued to fall, although it was fine, the branches of the shrub could scratch the paint.
Second, its adaptive cruise is a one-button start, which is particularly convenient to use. Previously, I had test-driven a car of more than 300,000 yuan, the steering wheel is a touch key, the touch is relatively vague, and it takes 2 steps to enter the adaptive cruise, which is very verbose.
The car machine of the domestic car is rich and colorful, not only can you navigate, but also watch movies, sing karaoke, etc. In comparison, the V60's car engine is more conservative. The focus of the operation content, one is related to driving, the other is intelligent interconnection, the latter is equipped with Android on-board intelligent system, voice control content is navigation, telephone, multimedia, can not control windows and air conditioning.
Different people have different views on this. My point of view is yes. Because the essence of the car is driving, more costs should be used for chassis, power and body, on this basis, keep pace with the times, and appropriately increase intelligent interconnection. If you put the cart before the horse, and watch movies and sing karaoke above driving, I can't accept such a car company.
Of course, if the central control screen adopts a horizontal screen with a higher position, it will be more perfect, easy to watch, and conducive to safety.
Final summary: international brands are more trustworthy.
The core value of many economy cars is transportation. If it is described as "living", what the station wagon brings is "life".
Touring cars are fun and practical, and Volvo's performance in terms of safety is where the V60 shines.
Through this experience, I not only felt the excitement of the station wagon again, but also convinced me of the value of international brands - it is indeed not cheap, but it is worth the money in the "invisible" places of many ordinary car owners.