About to get my 2026 XC60

[Scratch113]

Hello all,
I'm about to take delivery of my new 2026 XC60 T8 Ultra which I ordered back in September. It's finished in Forest Lake with the Dark Theme and 21" alloys. Otherwise the only options I've gone for are the electrically deployable towbar, front and rear dashcams and I opted for the heated windscreen over the Head Up Display. I've never had the latter before so I won't miss it, but I also don't have a garage so the prospect of going back to scraping the windscreen in the winter was something I wasn't prepared to do!

I've already had my free Ohme home charger installed and switched to Octopus Intelligent Go (my wife has a Mercedes EQA, so it's already proving very worthwhile as the previous Pod Point charger wasn't compatible with Intelligent Go).

I'm coming from a four year old fully loaded Skoda Kodiaq Sportline (my second) which has been a fantastic car, utterly reliable, but the new shape one just doesn't float my boat and there are loads of horror stories of software glitches with the Kodiaq Mk2 that weren't there in the Mk1.

Anyway, looking forward to joining the Volvo community and also being able to commute on electricity! (I do about 25 miles/day).

 

[Scratch113]

So I picked up my XC60 T8 Ultra on Friday - and it was a little bit of a disappointment.

Super-excited about getting it on the day and the handover went well, however within the first half mile of driving out of the dealer's forecourt, I'd turned around and headed back. There was a really, really loud squeak from the dash, which I traced pretty quickly to the bottom of the infotainment screen. It's really bad and I can't believe they didn't know about it before handover. It's so loud you can hear it all of the time and even over the radio playing at mid volume. Not good. I took the salesman out to show him the issue and he had agreed that it wasn't acceptable within the first 100 yards.

Anyway, it's booked to go back in on Wednesday to take the screen out and find out why it's squeaking so badly and hopefully there's something obvious because there's no way I could live with it.

And that was not all.

First day when I got it home (and with only 19 miles on the clock!) I'd planned all along to get a decent paint protection product onto the entire car. So I set to with a large range of GTehniq products, including Crystal Serum Light on the paint, having properly cleaned and prepped the surface with GTechniq Panel Wipe. Imagine my disappointment to find that the front edge of the bonnet is covered in marks that appear to be etched into the top surface of the paint and can't be removed, even with the panel wipe. Really difficult to take a picture to show the issues, but they're really obvious and not what I'd expect in a brand new car. So I've put the CSL onto every panel except the bonnet in the hope the dealer can sort it out.

And then there's a very, very obvious bird poo damage to the paint on the tailgate. I'd seen the car a week before delivery sitting outside at the dealer in amongst other cars and there was a very obvious bird poo on the rear end and the car was overall filthy. The fact that they thought that just a quick wash would do the trick and I'd never notice was pretty shocking.

There are also some issues with the leather seats - there's a very, very obvious stretch/dent mark right in the middle of the rear seat where either someone has kneeled for a period, or something heavy has been placed on the seat, which has made a permanent dent in the foam underneath and stretched the leather. Then there's a fairly obvious stretch/crease line in the front bolster of the passenger seat, which I think is more likely to be a manufacturing fault.

Overall I'm a little disappointed with the car, which is a shame. This is only the 8th new car I've ever bought (4 Audi, 1 Land Rover and 2 Skodas) and none of them have had these sort of problems on day 1 (although the Land Rover was the most unreliable car I've ever owned!). Both of the Skodas were almost fault free for a total of 8 years, so I'm hoping that my Volvo dealer can sort the squeaking dash (most serious problem) and also the paint on the bonnet and tailgate. The marks in the seats I can probably live with, but it shouldn't be like that on a brand new car...