In these homogenized times, not many cars have the ability to stop you in your tracks, but leave it to Polestar – unabashedly design-led – to deliver one of the few. Happening upon a finished Polestar 5 for the first time, the car basking in soft morning light outside a hotel on the outskirts of Marrakesh, is enough to momentarily halt the chatter. The car's snout, so low and wickedly tapered, has you wondering how it passed pedestrian impact regulations, quite apart from leaving room for the suspension top mounts.
It has a menace that arouses some deep, primordial uneasiness, but the effect is spectacular and pure Polestar. An endless wheelbase then separates alloys snug in their arches before the spearish silhouette ends in a Kamm tail that has a whiff of the sci-fi Volkswagen XL1 – an effect enhanced if you opt for the Magnesium matte paint.
View Price on AmazonThe 5 is a striking car – as it would be, having faithfully taken the lead of the show-stopping Precept concept of 2020. But pulling on the aesthetic thread unravels an even more interesting story. How is it that the proportions – beneath which lurks an output of 737 horsepower, rising to a ludicrous 871 horsepower in the top-ranking version – are so harmonious, and so unlike anything else in Polestar's stable?
In the era of cost constraints and engineering rationalization, the surprising answer is that the 5 has its own platform – one made with bonded sections of extruded aluminum in the Lotus spirit. It's a curiously artisanal turn for a mainstream manufacturer, especially given that the Polestar Performance Architecture has limited potential to spawn other creations beyond the upcoming 6 roadster.
Candidly, the 5 and its ultra-stiff underpinnings are unlikely to generate much profit. Yet it was important for its maker that this car be precisely as imagined, because it will serve as Polestar's flagship. It's the manifestation of the brand's deepest values: electric performance in an elegant, reductive GT package.
Prices start at $89,500 for the 737 horsepower Dual Motor model, for which you get an 800V electrical architecture, four-wheel drive, a 0-60mph time of 3.8 seconds and 421 miles of EPA-rated range. Above that sits the Performance with 871 horsepower, a 0-60mph time of 3.1 seconds and 346 miles of range.
Source: autocar.co.uk
