Long-term test: Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance

Our car is in Ultra spec, offering a black, tan or this light-coloured ‘Dawn’ interior, trimmed in a mix of recycled, synthetic and pine resin bio materials that somehow ends up looking and feeling like leather. Appropriately, it will suffer our biological warfare over the next six months; I’ll be intrigued to see how it copes.

If the interior is worryingly light, the £895 Mulberry Red paint is excessively dark – until it catches the sun. Then, blocky brown shifts to sparkling dark red, and it looks magnificent. In low light, the EX90’s subtle lines, absence of chrome, and hidden door handles accentuate the statuesque proportions to make for a brooding behemoth, towering on 22-inch alloys with those ace two-tone triangles. 

The EX90 range kicks off at £73,160 for the 333bhp single-motor, rear-drive variant with 350 miles of range and Core trim. That looks instantly less expensive next to Volvo’s £605 costlier plug-in hybrid XC90, the EX90’s sister car whose origin was well over a decade ago. 

Plus trim (£80,160) adds a head-up display, Bose sound system and cabin air purifier, but our £93,860 Ultra edition also lumps in an electrochromatic panoramic roof and posh seats with massage and ventilation. Most transformative is the active chassis, with electronically controlled suspension that adjusts 500 times per second to boost traction or comfort. It’s early days, but the Volvo has an obvious spread of ability, from pillowy soft on motorways and hunkered down on a cross-country dash to a touch leaden in town. 

We’ve stepped over the 456bhp Twin Motor variant in favour of Twin Motor Performance. This £4,300 upgrade – only available on Ultra spec – throws another 224 horses into the mix and bludgeons 1.3 seconds off the 0-62mph sprint, cutting it to a mere 4.2 seconds.