When I began reading about some of the safety systems on the new XC60, I figured I was headed for the equivalent of a long Saturday night at the Dallas Public Library.

Have you heard of “City Safety”? It uses a camera to sense when you’re approaching objects too quickly and literally slams on the brakes at speeds up to 9 mph, supposedly preventing you from doing the rumba with someone’s back bumper.

And this is definitely not a polite “put-down-your-latte-Buffy- we-need-to-stop” sort of deal. We’re talking locked brakes quivering in full ABS with people hanging from their seat belts here — an enormously amusing prospect for cellphone drunks. I got subjected to two tests of the system, and it seemed to really — ugh — work.

But the weird thing is that so does most everything else on the XC60, which is easily Volvo’s most stylish vehicle and one of its better-performing cars or crossovers.

Just to help you keep track of the landscape at Volvo, the XC60 is the newest of the automaker’s three crossovers.

At 4,174 pounds, it slots in between the 3,900-pound XC70 — a butched-up station wagon that calls itself a crossover — and the 4,700-pound XC90, Volvo’s most prominent crossover.

My metallic bronze, all-wheel-drive XC60 was loaded — as reflected in its lofty $44,240 sticker price. Equipped with a 281-horsepower, turbocharged, 3-liter six-cylinder and six-speed automatic, this beefy Volvo can sprint to 60 in 6.8 seconds, according to Motor Trend.

Style has never been one of sober, dowdy Volvo’s strengths, but the XC60 is a veritable hipster in a beret — not radically new or youthful, mind you, but certainly interesting.

Read the full story on Dallas Morning News

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