Category: Executive 
Price Range: £22,245 to £36,745
Comfortable ride, powerful yet quite economical, a good car for chauffeurs.
Engine not that quiet, wallowing of comfort chassis, slow-reacting auto gearbox, lacks flair, not as desirable as Volvo's estates.
Great to be driven in, not so great to drive.
The so-called Lowered Dynamic Chassis has certainly sharpened the S80 up: it's still no sports saloon, but its handling is a lot tidier than it once was. The light steering is somewhat vague, but it's now much easier to place the S80 correctly on a fast bend, and it feels considerably less barge-like. Automatic self-levelling contains body roll and cuts the worst of the wallow. Volvo's Four-C adaptive damping is a further option.
It's a different car with the Comfort chassis: few other large saloons come so softly-sprung these days. With this set-up, and the rather slow-reacting Geartronic transmission, the S80 is less European executive and more suited to the American sedan market - or the chauffeur-drive sector, in which it's already a popular choice.
Should you wish to push the S80 D5 to the limits of its capabilities - preferably in a straight line - it'll do a reasonable 140mph and 0-62mph in 8.5 seconds (manual) or nine seconds (auto). The engine is strong, no doubt, with plenty in reserve mid-range for overtaking, but it can get noisy when revved to any extent. It's hard to push the Geartronic versions on too hard: though there is a sequential-shift mode to the gearbox - controlled via the gear lever, no paddle-shifts - it adds little to the experience.
Essentially, though the S80 is competent and perfectly pleasant to waft around in, it now feels dated. Dynamically, it's a long way behind its German rivals or the Jaguar XF that Volvo cites as a competitor, and this D5 is utterly eclipsed by the new Mercedes-Benz E250 CDI.
