Why has the 2nd gen VOLVO XC60 shit rear door design

On SUVs you can find 2 rear door edge designs:

The simplest design is when the door is not part of the rear fender, since the “fender part of door design” requires some additional protection. But what happens if there is no protection? Stone chips, dirt, and rust in the future – that’s what. On the lower pictures you can see perfect examples what happens if the door sides are not protected.

On the upper examples of a 1st gen. Audi Q7 and a 1st gen. VW Touareg you can see the result of years and years of using the car on winter salty roads. Stone chips, road salt, and dirt did its job pretty well. Interestingly, the 2nd gen. VW Touareg and the 2nd gen. Audi Q7 have the rear doors designed the classic way, so the doors are no longer part of the rear fender. This means, that the engineers at these brands realized this issue and they were able to eliminate it for good on the newer models (pretty awesome right??).

2nd gen. Volvo XC60 rear door design is garbage

But for some strange reason, the Volvo engineers intentionally or unintentionally did a poor job designing the doors on the 2nd gen. Volvo XC60. This car is made from 2017 so it’s still a pretty new car which doesn’t have much common / well-known issues yet. But I can already tell, that one of the first issues of this car is gonna be the damaged paint and rust in the future on the rear door edge – on cars used on winter salty roads.

Protect those damn doors

As you can see on the video, even a very low mileage car can have nice rock damage on the rear doors so it’s important to protect these places! There are basically 3 options how to protect the rear doors:

• buy the genuine Volvo plastic mud flaps
• buy the Chinese plastic mud flaps
• put some paint protection film onto the rear door edges

If you have seen the video, then you know that the problem is also with the rear fender seal which can catch some of the dirt and road salt from the road. So this place is another potential future rust spot! So keep this in mind and if you are using the car on winter salty roads and you want to keep it for a longer time – then you should definitely do something about this design flaw. I guess its better to act early than too late? Or something like that...

The grille design is not the best either

The front grille also has a not very practical design. While it looks great, the space between the narrow parts of the grille is just too wide, which means that the rocks from the road and even the bigger bugs can more easily hit and damage the radiator. Sadly, there is no official genuine solution for this, but some creative owners have put a metallic mesh behind the grille. I have to add that these cars are available with a couple of different front grille designs. So some types are maybe not that vulnerable to letting the trash trough + the diesel engine cars and maybe even the hybrid versions have active air flaps behind the grille which if closed are obviously not letting in anything.

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Are there any other issues guv’nor ? (2025 update)

To this day Volvo somehow managed to sell over 1.5 million of these cars globally. To be honest, I’m not really surprised that the the 2nd gen. XC60 is a successful car, because it does have many great features and qualities:

• the exterior and interior design is great
• the interior is well built
• the optional front seats are very comfortable
• the optional adaptive air suspension works great
• the various modern driver assist. features work good
• the engines are powerful enough

All of this sounds great, but it’s not without its drawbacks. One of the biggest downsides are the 4-cylinder engines, which simply don’t match the refinement of the silky-smooth 6-cylinder options found in rival brands. And while you’d expect a smaller engine to be more fuel-efficient, the non-hybrid versions don’t exactly excel in that department either. To top of that, sometimes the working of the engine and gearbox is not that smooth/refined as you would expect from an expensive car like this (but this is something not everyone will notice or will be bothered by).

Then there are the issues. Since this is not a used car review I will briefly mention just a couple of them like the:

• occasional oil consumption of the diesel engines (but sometimes the petrol engines too)
• various software related issues
• infamous issues with the multimedia system (2021 and younger cars after facelift)
• mysterious vibrations at highway speeds
• problems with Adblue system-diesel engines
• broken air suspension air compressor
• also some minor problems like squealing noises from the front brakes or occasional ticking/knocking noises from the front of the car.

Haldex type AWD

Because of the accumulated dirt and lack of proper oil flow you can end up with a damaged pump in the future !