First drive: Ocean Race additions put the vogue into Volvo’s V90

What is it?

The Volvo Ocean Race is a gruelling, nine month sailing competition that covers 45,000 nautical miles and travels across six continents. Volvo, the owner of the endurance challenge, has decided to create a special-edition version of its popular V90 Cross Country to celebrate the aqua endeavor and introduced this – the V90 Cross Country Ocean Race. Snappily named it may not be, but the Ocean Race packs a host of ‘lifestyle’ touches designed to make it more capable whatever your adventure happens to be.

What’s new?

The Ocean Race is based on the excellent and well-built V90 Cross Country, which gives it an exceptionally capable platform to begin with. It’s comfortable, spacious inside and, when powered by a 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine like our test car, economical too.

Volvo has thrown all manner of goodies at the Ocean Race, however. The most notable of these is the ‘Crystal White’ paint, which when combined with a range of orange accents really does make this V90 look quite different to any other car in the range. You also get waterproof seat covers, and a water-resistant boot floor to help it stand up to outdoor activities such as surfing or, more accurately for this car, sailing.

What’s under the bonnet?

Our test car came with Volvo’s D4 powertrain, which sees a 2.0-litre four-cylinder diesel engine under the bonnet combined with an eight-speed automatic gearbox sending drive to all four wheels. Though it’s somewhat lacking in punch lower down, the engine settles down comfortably when at a motorway cruise, and Volvo claims it’ll return 54.3mpg on the combined cycle – we saw around 50mpg during our test of the car, driving over a mixture of motorway and b-roads.

That engine can feel a little clattery when cold too, and it does tend to send quite a lot of noise into the cabin when accelerating hard. That said, if you’re after a little more urgency and refinement, then we’d opt for the more powerful D5 model.

What’s it like to drive?

The Ocean Race is mechanically unchanged over the regular V90 Cross Country. That means it still gets a 65mm bump in ride height compared to the standard V90, with the aim of giving the car a little more off-road capability. The effect that has is to raise the car’s centre of gravity, however, which means that the Ocean Race does lean an awful lot through quicker corners. The steering has a good amount of weight to it, however, which allows you to place the car quite accurately.

You can sharpen things up by putting the car in ‘Sport’ mode, but in reality it’s best left in comfort mode. This large, heavy estate isn’t meant to be setting new Nurburgring lap records after all; it feels most at home on the motorway.

How does it look?

Thanks to a range of extra touches that you wouldn’t expect to find on a ‘traditional’ Volvo, we’d argue that the Ocean Race is one of the best-looking cars in the Swedish manufacturer’s range at the moment. Yes, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the white paint and orange accents really do help it to stand out against the grey and black estate cars usually found on our roads. The Ocean Race also gains beautiful 20-inch diamond cut alloy wheels, which come engraved with unique Ocean Race designs – they look fantastic, though do give this V90 a slightly harsher ride.

Volvo can even fit the Ocean Race with a matching gloss white roof box, which really does look the part.

What’s it like inside?

The orange contrast theme is carried over to the Ocean Race’s interior, too. The black leather upholstery gets orange stitching, and the whole cabin is lifted considerably by the use of carbon-fibre trim on the dashboard and gearshift section. Of course, as a result of being based on the regular V90 Cross Country, the Ocean Race’s interior is brilliantly comfortable, with plenty of space for those sat up front matched by an equally roomy back row.

The boot is also usefully large, offering up 560 litres of space with the rear seats in place, rising to 1,526 litres with those seats folded flat. The addition of a water-resistant material for the boot floor makes it more hard-wearing than usual, too.

What’s the spec like?

Let’s get something out of the way – the Volvo V90 Cross Country Ocean Race starts at £51,270 which, from any angle, is a lot of money for a ‘normal’ estate car. Considering that you can get a base V90 (albeit in lowest-powered, lowest-specification form) for £36,435, then this represents a considerable hike in price. That said, you do get a lot of equipment for your money.

The Ocean Race receives Volvo’s excellent nine-inch central infotainment display, which controls a variety of the car’s settings and functions. Full leather upholstery and heated front seats come as part of the overall price too. Of course, being a Volvo there’s a wealth of safety equipment fitted too, including pedestrian, cyclist and large animal detection, fully automatic emergency braking and run-off road protection – this latter feature automatically tightens the seatbelts should the car detect that it has run off the road.

Verdict

The Volvo V90 Cross Country Ocean Race may be a special-edition vehicle designed to celebrate one of the world’s toughest sailing competitions, but it’s still a proper car in its own right. Through a series of unique styling touches it manages to feel quite different than the regular V90, and it’ll be ideal for those who really don’t want a ‘traditional’ estate. Yes, it is expensive, but a wealth of standard equipment helps to take a little bit of the sting out of the car’s high price. It also looks like no other wagon on the road today – and you can’t really put a price on that, can you?