Somewhere in Sacramento County, there's a guy in a Camaro ZL1 who thinks he must have been hallucinating.
I'm on my way to have lunch with a friend and am driving on a four-lane country road that drops down to two lanes. The guy in the Camaro blows past me at an insane rate just so he can be in front of me on the two-lane stretch.
Fine.
But there are some stop lights along the way. And at the first one, with a clear road ahead of him, he punches it. So I decide to have some fun and match his speed.
This happened at three stop lights. He's looking in his rearview mirror at an old guy in a gray Volvo SUV---that he can't shake with his 650-horsepower, $72,000 pony car.
I mean, he could, but he wasn't willing to tap all 650 ponies, and if he had, I would have (probably, maybe) backed off.
What Camaro Dude probably didn't know was that this is a Volvo XC60 Recharge...a plug-in hybrid that makes 455 horsepower, 523 pound-feet of torque and does 0-60 in 4.5 seconds. His Camaro can do it in 3.7, but that just means that even if he hammered it, I'd still be a looming presence in his rearview mirror.
I've written about the XC60 Recharge before---most recently two years ago. The basics haven't changed: The horsepower and torque above from a plug-in hybrid that gets 36 miles of pure electric driving before the gasoline/electric hybrid kicks in. EPA estimate 63 MPGe, 28 mpg city/highway average on the hybrid alone (subtracting the pure electric miles). All-wheel drive standard. Eight-speed automatic transmission.
What's new here is that this is the top-level Polestar Engineered trim. Volvo's performance arm brings Akebono brakes with gold-colored calipers, adjustable Ohlins dampers and a Polestar Engineered fron strut bar to firm up the suspension and make the XC60 Recharge feel like it's glued to the pavement at speed.
Rear cargo space isn't the reason you buy one of these, but since we're on the topic, there's 21.6 cubic feet of it behind the second-row seats. Fold those flat and it's 49.8.
Put people in the rear seats, and they'll be happy, with 38 inches of legroom.
And the front seats---well, Volvo has not lost its touch. These are the chairs you want for an all-day drive. Firm but not hard, with tons of support and breathable fabric.
The base price of the 2025 Volvo XC60 T8 AWD Polestar Engineered is $75,250 ($76,545 including destination). That price includes all the mechanicals discussed above, plus 21-inch wheels with summer tires, four USB-C ports, Bluetooth, Google Built-In, Apple CarPlay, a Bowers & Wilkins premium sound system, a full suite of active safety features, a panoramic moonroof with sunshade, Nappa leather front sport seats and leatherette rear seats, heated front and rear seats and steering wheel, a surround view camera, a graphical head-up display, crystal gear lever and gold-colored seat belts.
The only extra-cost option on our test vehicle was 22-inch alloy wheels on summer tires, for $800. That puts the number at the bottom of the window sticker at $77,345.
Even without the Polestar Engineered goodies, the XC60 Recharge is a ball to drive. The suspension tweaks make it feel even more like a muscle car in disguise---one that can run for 36 miles without using a drop of gas.
