Big Dipper

We point the way to Volvo’s highperformance, highvalue S60 Polestar!

 

- Rishaad Mody

1996 saw the birth of the Swedish Touring Car Championship, a series designed to emulate the massive success and fan following of the British Touring Car Championship. In its first year, Swedish Driver Jan Nilsson’s team Flash Engineering entered as the official Volvo team fielding a front-wheel-drive 850 Super Touring built in accordance with BTCC regulations. Success was immediate. The team won the first two championships and still holds an STCC record of winning six consecutive races. In 2004, Nilsson sold his share of the company to Christian Dahl, who joined the company as chief mechanic in 2001. The team name was changed to Polestar, a simultaneous homage to Sweden’s geographic location and a reference to being a star on the racetrack. Polestar continued for a few years as a racing team but with bigger and bigger involvement with Volvo. Then, in 2009, they were recognized as the official performance partner of Volvo.

At this point, Volvo owners could purchase Polestar Performance Optimisation packages for road cars with turbocharged engines. In 2010, Polestar showed off their first road car effort, the C30 Polestar Concept. More road car packages appeared over the years as did some concepts, including the wild 500-plus horsepower S60 Polestar Concept from 2012. In 2015, Volvo bought out Polestar, making it the company’s new performance brand, à la AMG and M. Today, the S60 Polestar is the most powerful road car from the performance brand and it’s now available in India. We got a short experience of the car at the Kari Motor Speedway, and the initial impressions are highly positive.