Until July 2017 Polestar served as Volvo’s in-house performance brand. That month, the Swedish mothership spun off its cyan-hued subsidiary into a distinct division billed as “a new separately-branded electrified global high performance car company.” On September 25, Polestar uploaded a black square to its Instagram page with two words: The End. One week later, another black square appeared bearing only a date: 17.10.17 (that’s October 17 to US folks). The next day, Polestar began uploading a series of detail shots of what will be its first car as a standalone operation, the Polestar 1. Put all the Instagram pieces together like Autocar magazine did (plus a few other images we didn’t see on the feed), and you get the image above.
The white wonder – maybe a coupe, maybe not – will be revealed at the Shanghai Auto Show on October 17. A seriously handsome teaser, the rear end bears welcome resemblance to the gorgeous Volvo Concept Coupe revealed at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. Thomas Ingenlath, who designed the Volvo Concept Coupe, now fills the role of Polestar CEO, and we can only hope he brought the rest of his design with him. In Frankfurt, Volvo claimed its plug-in hybrid, S60-based concept to be good for roughly 400 horsepower and 442 pound-feet of torque.
Earlier this year, some expected Polestar to devote itself to “high-performance electric cars,” yet Volvo’s statement about the spinoff used the word “electrified.” That, combined with the tailpipes on the teaser, would appear to indicate a robust hybrid in the works: consensus has gathered around a plug-in hybrid with 2.0-liter T8 Twin-Engine powertrain pushing 600 horsepower. Polestar’s statements about the Polestar 1, made in the teaser video below, want us to know that there won’t be any bluff or guff between car, driver, and road. That’s to be expected from a company that created its first two highly-lauded vehicles by letting in-house racing driver Robert Dahlgren spec performance and parts to his liking, giving him no more instruction than, “Use your imagination. Just try to make it as fun as possible.” Come on Shanghai. This should be good.
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