Volvo’s Decision to Change Polestar

In 2009, Volvo partnered with Polestar Racing to begin modifying the Swedish manufacturer’s production vehicles. The first two vehicles (C30 and S60) were unveiled to the world as concept cars with heavily upgraded internals and exterior body panels. Eventually, Volvo began producing limited-edition S60 and V60 Polestar vehicles, featuring the Porsche-developed 3.0L T6 engine that was modified to 345 hp.

For die-hard enthusiasts of the Volvo brand like myself, these vehicles were our poster cars. The V60 Polestar was always one of my “dream daily drivers” because of its power and practicality, to name just two of its attributes.

In 2017, Volvo announced that Polestar would begin to operate as its own venture, producing electric vehicles. Today, Polestar produces 3 production vehicles and plans to expand into more vehicle segments over the next 5 years. Volvo still has a V60 “Polestar Engineered” being produced today, which boasts a 4-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain. But the character is just not what it used to be.

In the 2025 V60 Polestar Engineered, common sports car features like paddle shifters, loud exhaust notes, and bucket seats are just not like they used to be in the previous generation vehicles. It seems as though they keep it around as more of a formality than anything else, and to us enthusiasts the lack of character is very apparent.

Now, I understand that Volvo’s value proposition is to provide safe, luxurious vehicles (and that vehicle performance is at the bottom of their list of importance), and the separation from Polestar is a smart business move in order to tackle the EV market, but I wish the company would bring back a performance division to capture some enthusiast market share.

Right now, Volvo’s V60 Polestar Engineered is competing with, well, nobody. The RS6 Avant, M5 Touring, and E63 AMG are all larger, more powerful vehicles that compete amongst themselves. If Volvo wanted to steal some of the German purists, they could if they really wanted to allocate the human capital, funds, and other resources towards the project.

The Polestar namesake may be out of the picture, but the engineers could surely do a great job at pumping out a 6-cylinder S60, V60/V90, and even an XC90/XC60 to compete with AMG, M, and RS/S from Germany. The task of capturing this market proves to be difficult, but with a slight design change (wider fenders, more aggressive stance, etc.) it isn’t impossible.

Will Volvo elect to work towards this change? Probably not. Can we as enthusiasts hope and dream this will happen soon? Certainly.