Ride & Handling - Volvo S80 V8 road test

It was too fast for the photographer. So we had to make do with a static shot.

Ride and Handling

Because the tyres have an aspect ratio of 45, one can feel sharp ridges on the road at low speed. That doesn’t mean the ride is bad – nothing ever jars. It’s absorbent enough and gives you enough steering feel. At high speed, the suspension is a little too soft. It tends to pitch over crests, and gets caught by off-camber bumps.

At really high speeds – above 190kph in the wet – it feels a little nervous, even though it has got AWD and good feel from the steering. Maybe standing water and too much power doesn’t make for a good combination. Any road up, it isn’t as planted as an E240 or a BMW 5-series past 200kph, but we were driving in pouring rain, so that could’ve been a factor. It’d probably be a whole lot better in the dry. During our time with it, however, we never felt confident enough to push it beyond the limit because it felt a little twitchy.

Making the suspension harder would’ve made so many more bumps filter into the cabin, so we’re assuming Volvo retuned a hard suspension and made it softer for our road conditions. Fair enough, we think. They’ve done a good job with it – a very good compromise between ride and handling.

Steering feedback/response

Steering assist can be adjusted from low to medium or high. Feel from the steering is good, but nothing to shout about. It feels a little disconnected despite giving you enough information about the road. It’s dead accurate – if you want to be in a particular place, turn the wheel and you’ll end up exactly where you imagined yourself to be. With the assist set to high, it requires no effort at all to steer the car at low speed. The best of both worlds, with the help of electronics.

Ground clearance

The car is a little too low, especially the chin. It may have enough clearance, but we didn’t have the confidence to take it over large speed breakers and through deep potholes with impunity. However, it is a powerful car, and as such you can’t have a car so powerful with a high centre of gravity, so if you need more clearance, may we point you in the direction of the excellent XC90 instead, which is also available with the very same V8?