History of Polestar
Polestar gets its roots from racing and has been making Volvos go quicker for over 20 years
JJUST LIKE THE AMGS, Ms and RS cars from Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are synonymous with going faster in a straight line and quicker around the corners, so is Polestar for Volvo. It may not have as colourful a history as these famed German brands but it is getting there.
Polestar started off as Flash Engineering in 1996 to run the factory Volvo team in the inaugural Scandinavian Touring Car Championship (STCC) with the Volvo 850 Super Touring. Flash Engineering won two straight titles in a row beating BMWs, Fords and Opels in both seasons. The 850s made way for the S40s and Flash Engineering experienced moderate success in the coming years. Flash Engineering, named after Jan ’Flash’ Nilsson, who also raced successfully for the racing outfit, sold his shares of the company to Christian Dahl. Dahl called his solely owned company Polestar to represent the frozen north of Sweden with the pole star and also playing on the connection to pole position and star of racing. Cyan Racing took over maintenance and that’s why you will see a Cyan Racing logo on the alloy wheels of the S60 Polestar you see in these pages. Things changed when Polestar/Cyan Racing were assigned to develop the C30 hatchback for racing. Impressed by the development of the C30 and success in the 2009 season where Polestar won the driver’s and team title in the STCC, Volvo made Polestar the official performance partner. Now regular Volvos could get Polestar performance optimisation parts.
The team won again in 2010 and after missing the title for the next two years, has been winning both the constructors and driver’s title ever since. It was only in 2013 that Polestar launched its first production Polestar model, the S60 Polestar. In July 2015, Volvo acquired Polestar and it was announced that the brand will be used for high performance Volvos. The S60 Polestar was the first car and its estate sibling, the V60 Polestar followed. The latter won’t be launched in India though as the company is of the opinion that there is no market for performance estates here. What else is in the pipeline then? Nothing is officially announced but if Polestar is following the footsteps of the German three, every new Volvo should have its own Polestar variant in the future.