– Los Angeles, California

The trip odometer showed just under 1,000 miles when I pulled into my driveway, the long road trip from Los Angeles to Prescott, Arizona, and back complete. The Volvo V90 Cross Country was hardly fazed, and to be honest, neither was I. If I would’ve realized, at that moment, that I left something valuable back in Prescott, I’d have jumped back in the car without a second thought.

Living up to the “Cross Country” part of its name, Volvo’s rugged V90 is one of the best long-distance cruisers I’ve ever driven. But its merits extend far beyond that of great highway prowess.

Pros

Butch and beautiful. It’s amazing how the V90 Cross Country manages to look both prettier and butcher than the majority of crossovers on the road today. The tall wagon shape is great, I can’t get enough of the combination of wide stance and low overall height. And while a lot of people prefer the single-color look of cars equipped with the Luxury Package, I dig the rugged, two-tone appearance of this test car – gray cladding, 19-inch wheels, and all. Volvo’s 90-series cars are some of the most beautiful on the road today, and none of that grace and elegance is lost in high-riding Cross Country form.

Room for everything. Volvo’s larger XC90 may have the more capacious cargo hold, but man, there’s a ton of room in the V90 Cross Country – 69 cubic feet of space, in fact. At one point, I carried four adults, a bunch of luggage, and an average-size charcoal grill without needing t...