News from the chilly Scandinavians has brought Volvo fans the world over to rejoice when Volvo Car Group announced that it has acquired 100 percent of Polestar, a famed Swedish high performance car company, including the Polestar brand.
Volvo isn’t really a car company that springs immediately to mind when speaking about performance cars. They are known for making sensible and safe family saloon cars. That notion however, is rapidly changing because Volvo currently develops and manufactures some of the most powerful, most environmentally-friendly engines in the automotive industry.
Having said all of that, Volvo has made some incredible road going monsters in its time. In 1996, Volvo introduced the five-door station-wagon called the 850R. With a manual gearbox it could do the century sprint in 6.5 seconds and with a top speed of 255 km/h. This was done with help of a 2.3-litre five-cylinder powerplant.
Fast forward this year and consider the S60 Polestar as a proposition. In essence, it’s a 345 hp turbocharged inline-six with a Haldex all-wheel-drive system with a rear torque bias and huge 245mm wide Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres. Add to it the Ferrari-beating rarity and that ever so striking shade of Polestar’s “Rebel Blue” lick of paint that Volvo splashes on their performance-oriented Polestar cars.
In 2015, Volvo expects to sell 750 Polestar versions of the V60 wagon and S60 sedan globally. Polestar sales are forecasted to increase between 1,000 and 1,500 cars a year in the medium term under Volvo’s ownership. The Swedish carmaker also revealed that existing Polestar Performance employees will become Volvo employees, and that the Polestar racing team will be renamed despite retaining Christian Dahl, former owner of Polestar, the person in control.
However, it is very unclear at this juncture, on whether or not Volvo will be retailing its new-acquired Polestar car division on our shores.
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