Every now and then I have to park in the city in lots where you have no choice but to leave your keys in the car.

Now the great thing is that I can engage the lock on the folding rear seats and lock up the trunk with the master key, and then hand over the service key to the attendant, leaving my stuff safe and sound in the trunk.

Or so I thought until I started wondering about that little opening behind the armrest in the center of the rear seat. Sure enough, I can simply fold down the armrest, open that little hatch and then stick my arm in the trunk and unlock the rear seats and fold them down.

I guess only someone that knows the Swedes like having that opening for storing their skis, and that the car has folding rear seats, would figure this out, but it still seems a bit silly that it's that easy to work around the locked trunk.

Is this really a loophole Volvo missed, or is there a way to lock the hatch behind the armrest?

 

I guess it's something Volvo just overlooked. Put a sticker on that passage that says "Causion - Rattle Snakes" or something like that on it and maybe a thief will not tread those waters.

I would imagine that most people don't know that the rear seats fold down, let alone that there is a latch to lock them, not to mention that the seat fold down release locks can be released by reaching through the arm rest access hole to the trunk??? Get the picture? I guess the best thing would be to leave your valuables somewhere other than your trunk when you have to park in those situations.

 

You are right that chances for anyone but Volvo nerds ever figuring this out would be pretty slim.

Sometimes the car is my only option for leaving my luggage though. In fact, I've left stuff in my trunk unlocked a number of times until I realized I had a service key. So I'm not really worried about it, but if the latch could be locked I'd do it.

I just thought it was funny though how they made those locking latches for the rear seats, but forgot about that big hole in the middle.

 

Engineers, what do you really expect? Those nerds are alway missing their finger in front of their noses.

I gues you could make some kind of lock for it. Something simple that you could slide a rod or something through.