2026 Volvo V60 Cross Country B5 AWD Ultra Review, it’s the end of an era

The Volvo V60 Cross Country is pretty much dead. Not with some glorious Viking funeral involving flaming arrows and a fjord. No. It’s disappearing the way all good cars disappear nowadays: quietly, politely, and because marketing departments discovered Americans would rather drive six-foot-tall refrigerators with cupholders. And that is a tragedy. 

The 2026 V60 Cross Country B5 AWD Ultra is one of the last proper wagons left. A real long-roof estate car for people who still understand that practicality does not require driving something shaped like a suburban refrigerator. 

Modern parking lots are now filled with crossovers that all look like they were designed by the same exhausted accountant. Grey blobs. White blobs. Black blobs. All standing there in neat rows like a carton of depressed supermarket eggs. And then, tucked away in the corner, there’s the Volvo wagon. Long. Low. Elegant. Looking like it actually has somewhere interesting to go.  

That’s the thing about wagons. They look fast even when standing still.  SUVs look like they’ve given up. 

The V60 Cross Country, meanwhile, has this wonderfully smug Scandinavian confidence about it. It doesn’t need fake vents, massive grilles. It simply exists, quietly radiating taste and superiority while carrying a Labrador, two bicycles, and half of IKEA. And unlike an SUV, you can actually reach the roof without hiring a Sherpa. 

Under The Hood 

Now, is it exciting? No, not really. The engine is a 247-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder mild hybrid, which sounds less like a powertrain and more like a kitchen appliance. However, it’ll do 0-60 in 6.6 seconds.  But that misses the point entirely. This isn’t a car for men named Darren who wear wraparound sunglasses indoors and think “bro” is punctuation. This is a car for adults. Adults who appreciate comfort, refinement, and the ability to drive 600 miles without requiring spinal reconstruction afterward. 

Wheels and Tires

This Ultra comes with some very nice 20-inch 7-Spoke, Matte Graphite Diamond Cut Alloy Wheels wearing Pirelli P Zero All-Season, 245/40R tires. These tires are rather like a well-trained butler. On a dry road, they’re composed, precise, and quietly get on with the job. In the wet, they cling to the tarmac with the sort of determination normally reserved for a Labrador hanging onto a sausage. And on the highway, they’re so hushed and refined that you begin to wonder if someone has secretly replaced your car with a luxury German saloon.

When winter arrives, and the roads are dusted with a light sprinkling of snow, they cope admirably. But if you’re planning to charge into the Arctic Circle or tackle a blizzard that would make a polar bear reach for a cardigan, forget it. These are performance tyres, not snowshoes.

Their sidewalls are deliberately firm, which is splendid when you’re pressing on through a fast bend because the car feels alert and eager. The downside is that rough roads are transmitted into the cabin with slightly more enthusiasm than a conventional touring tire. Not enough to loosen your fillings, but enough to remind you that comfort was not the only item on the engineering brief.

Driving 

Interior

Good Lord, the seats. Volvo seats are not seats. They are orthopedic miracles wrapped in Swedish leather. You don’t sit in them; you’re gently absorbed into them like a middle-aged man disappearing into a very expensive memory foam mattress. After eight hours behind the wheel, you emerge fresher than when you left. Which feels unnatural and vaguely suspicious.  

Inside, the cabin is magnificent in that uniquely Volvo way. German luxury cars now assault you with ambient lighting bright enough to grow tomatoes and touchscreens that require a software engineering degree to adjust the fan speed. The Volvo simply calms down. Wood trim. Soft leather. Metal switches with a reassuring click. It’s like sitting inside a boutique Scandinavian hotel that happens to have all-wheel drive.  

And because this is the Cross Country version, it’s slightly lifted. Not enough to climb Everest, obviously, but enough to survive snow, mud, dirt roads, or the cratered surface of downtown Los Angeles without exploding a wheel. It’s the automotive equivalent of wearing expensive hiking boots to an artisan coffee shop.  

Of course, enthusiasts adore it. Which is precisely why it’s disappearing, because the V60 Cross Country wasn’t cool in the traditional sense. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t trying to dominate TikTok. It was cool because it understood something modern cars have forgotten. You do not need to sit three feet higher than everyone else to enjoy driving. And that, frankly, makes it one of the best cars Volvo has built in years. 

Cargo Space

The 2026 Volvo V60 Cross Country has enough cargo space to make a Swiss Army knife look medically under-equipped. Behind the rear seats, you get somewhere between 18 and 23 cubic feet of room, depending, apparently, on which Scandinavian man with a tape measure was consulted that morning. 

Fold the rear seats flat, however, and suddenly this sensible Swedish estate transforms into a mobile bungalow with 60.5 cubic feet of carrying capacity. You could fit a Labrador, three flat-pack IKEA wardrobes, a week’s worth of camping gear, and quite possibly a minor member of the royal family back there without anyone needing to sit on anyone else’s lap. 

And that’s the genius of it. While every other car company is busy building bloated SUVs the size of Luxembourg, Volvo quietly built a fastidious Nordic wagon that can swallow half your life without driving like a refrigerated delivery van. 

Pricing

Base price starts at $53,595, but my Ultra trim tester started at $58,595, and it had a few options, including the Climate Package for $750, a Retractable Trailer Hitch for $1,775, those 20-inch 7-Spoke, Matte Graphite Diamond Cut Alloy Wheels for $3,305, and finally the superb Bowers and Wilkins premium Sound System for $3,200. Total price including destination is $68,665.

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Verdict

Car enthusiasts spend years posting online about how much they love wagons, and then immediately go finance an SUV because “it’s more practical.” Meanwhile, Volvo sold roughly ten XC60s for every V60 wagon. The market has spoken, and unfortunately, the market is an idiot. So now the V60 Cross Country fades away, leaving America with one less elegant, sensible, beautifully engineered estate car and approximately fourteen million more anonymous crossovers named things like “Terrain Platinum X.” Which is depressing. 

2026 Volvo V60 Cross Country Numbers