The tinkling of Orrefers Crystal champagne flutes breaks through the silence, which in itself is at complete odds with the chaos of peak-hour traffic we seem to be towering over while being pampered by massaged seats and beating off the winter chills with a heated steering wheel.

And, with that, there’s a realisation this isn’t your average car. It’s not even your average luxury car. And it’s certainly not what we’ve come to expect from Volvo, the Swedish car maker which has forged a reputation for pushing the boundaries of safety rather than plushness.

The XC90 Excellence is the best of the best from Volvo, an ultra-luxurious version of its largest SUV designed to cocoon its occupants in opulence and showcase the brand’s latest technology.

Priced from $172,200 (plus on-roads) it commands a significant $50k premium over the highest-grade ‘regular’ XC90 but undercuts serious luxury SUVs like the Range Rover and equivalent top-grade variants of the Mercedes-Benz GLS and BMW X5.

For the money, the Excellence ditches the family-friendly seven-seat configuration of normal XC90s and instead has a dedicated four-person layout that focuses on rear passengers with individual business class-style seats that are heated, ventilated and have a massage function with flip-up aircraft-style tables and a bottle chiller, complete with those Orrefors Crystal flutes, between them.

There’s also a Perspex divider between the seats and the boot to reduce road noise and iPads are mounted on the back of each front-seat headrest to keep those in the back entertained and/or informed.

Up front, it’s all standard XC90 fare, but that’s not an indictment on its status as the overall interior design and presentation is among the best in the business thanks to the use of light woodgrain highlights, the excellent portrait-oriented multimedia screen, a fully digital display and lashings of leather around the cabin.

At first glance, it’s an impressive layout that portrays genuine limousine-like luxury, but rub back the veneer and there’s some noticeable shortcuts that validate its price against more opulent – and far more expensive – alternatives like the Bentley Bentayga and the Range Rover SVAutobiography.

For starters, there’s actually not much room in the back to stretch out when using the reclining seats and the iPads are connected by charging cables that hang out of the headrests but aren’t linked to the car’s multimedia system at all - other than being able to connect only one device at a time to the Bluetooth - and there’s no data streaming or wireless headphones. Actually, back-seat passengers have no controls for the main multimedia system whatsoever, which seems at odds with its focus.

Then there’s a few little things that are missing, like a power adjustment for the steering column and soft-closing doors, that highlight its origins as a humble family wagon rather than a truly premium luxury car.

Still, it’s a nice place to be, even if you’re being paid to be behind the wheel, as the driver's seat is as comfy as the rest yet snug in all the right places, there’s excellent vision from the high-set driving position, the digital instruments and head-up display are crisp and clear and the smartphone-like interface in the touchscreen multimedia system makes it easy to navigate through the myriad of functions and settings on offer.

If you are driving by yourself or you happen to be chauffeuring a music afficianado, the Bowers & Wilkins audio system won’t disappoint with its clarity and staging, which can be tuned to individual passengers.

Under the bonnet, the Excellence is powered by Volvo’s complex and range-topping plug-in hybrid powertrain, which it dubs T8 and links a 2.0-litre supercharged and turbochaged petrol four-cylinder engine with an electric motor to generate combined outputs of 300kW and 640Nm all the while sipping a claimed average of 2.1L/100km of premium unleaded.

While they are impressive numbers, the reality of how it translates into the everyday is a fair bit different. Volvo claims the T8 can be driven on electric power alone for upto 35km, but that seems to be in ideal conditions without stop-start traffic and climbing hills as we found the battery could easily be drained in around 20km.

It’s more convincing as a conventional hybrid, using both power sources, as it moves away from a standstill silently and briskly before the petrol engine chimes in and takes over. That transition isn’t as well integrated as other luxury PHEVs, like the seamless BMW 530e for example, as there’s a noticeable dip in torque during the changeover before the turbo charger builds up boost and it takes off again.

Even then, it has a lot of mass to move – over 2300kg – and while it never feels undernourished it can sound a little raspy and uncouth under heavy load.

To accommodate the battery pack, Volvo has reduced the size of fuel tank to just 50L, and thereby limiting its total driving range, even with a full chanrge, to around 450km, which is no better than a conventional petrol engine equivalent and significantly less than a diesel alternative.

What all of that means is that getting the best out of the T8 powertrain – or achieving anything close to Volvo’s fuel consumption claim - requires recharging the battery regularly and only driving short distances, as we recorded an average fuel use figure of 6.9L/100km after using it on a mix of urban and freeway driving. It could work if the Excellence is being used only occasionally as a company’s executive limousine – ferrying the fat cats from the airport to the city and back for example – but its appeal is diminished for those that want to drive it more often than that.

It doesn’t help that the air suspension is hardly a posterchild for plushness, as it jitters over small corrugations and crashes into larger bumps, and even though it has a full suite of driving aids that Volvo claims makes the XC90 one of the smartest and safest cars on the road, systems like the lane keeping assistance function aren’t as convincing or act as invisibly as those offered in Volvo’s German rivals.

The XC90 Excellence slots into a very small niche, and on face value it looks impressively luxurious enough to appeal to those that could afford the finer things in life, and occasionally want to be driven rather than take the wheel themselves. While it appears exceptionally good value against top-shelf limousines like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7-Series or equivalent SUVs such as the Range Rover and Bentayga, the reality is it can’t match any of them for opulence, both inside the cabin and in how it drives.

What it does do is show that Volvo is serious about stretching its brand appeal into genuine luxury territory, but that it needs more than just Orrefers Crystal champagne flutes to take on – and attract – the high fliers.

2017 Volvo XC90 Excellent Price and Specifications

Price: $172,200 (plus on-road costs)

Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder supercharged/turbocharged petrol/electric

Power: 300kW (combined)

Torque: 640Nm (combined)

Transmission: 8-spd automatic, AWD

Fuel use: 2.1L/100km