► Polestar creates winter-ready Arctic Circle cars
► CAR drives the trio of one-off EVs
► Polestar’s chief chassis engineer tells us about them
‘It’s a bit like saying which is your favourite child’ says Joakim Rydholm, head of chassis development at Polestar, when I ask him which car in its newly revealed Arctic Circle collection is his favourite.
Though Polestar might be struggling financially behind the scenes and with recent leadership changes, from the outside looking in at this Swedish EV brand, you’d get no indication of its internal troubles without that industry knowledge.
The Polestar 2 Arctic Circle collection was revealed back in 2022 to show its performance intent when the firm only had one car in its line-up. Fast forward three years and its new Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 are aiming to be the silver bullet this company needs, and are the perfect base to create some wild one-off ice-racing specials and make a ‘collection’ of Arctic Circle cars.
A day earlier, the trio of bespoke EVs made their debut at the FAT International Ice Race in Zell am See, Austria, the perfect place to show them off in front of thousands of well-heeled alpine sorts. Now it’s my turn to try them out, though with the Ice Race finished for another year, and snowfall being less than usual across the Alps this year, I’m resorted to clear tarmac rather than the ice we might have hoped for.
Polestar has swapped the bespoke Pirelli studded tyres used a day earlier on the ice in place of more suitable off-road tyres, but the cars still look absolutely mega, especially with the tremendous mountain backdrop. All feature similar modifications with a few differences between them depending on their use case. Rydholm says the Polestar 2’s modifications tailor it to rallying or gravel, while the 3 SUV looks more Dakar-ready with its suspension raised the most of any car at 40mm. The Polestar 4, meanwhile, is more tailored towards road use.
Modifications include bespoke three-way adjustable Ohlins dampers fitted to each car, white wheels (those on the new Polestar 3 and 4 are a new design for OZ aptly named Rally Legend), quad spotlights and even Recaro Pole Position seats. I have the latter in my own personal car and maintain they’re the car seats ever, and having them in an electric SUV is just ludicrous.
I start the day in the Polestar 3 and it’s my first drive of what my colleagues name as one of the best electric SUVs you can buy. It looks glorious given its size – it’s only slightly smaller than a BMW X5 – and it feels the one least suited to rally use. I love its bespoke roof basket housing a spare tyre, snow shovel, light bar and carrier box, but it sure doesn’t do it in any favours to drive.
Adding more than 100kg to its weight, and especially being so top-heavy, it inevitably leads to a vast amount of roll through the corners of the superb Alpine roads around Hinterthal, south of Salzburg, and then to a loss of grip as a result.
I chat with Joakim afterwards to relay my experience and he reluctantly agrees. He doesn’t say it in exact words but you can establish pretty quickly that it was a designer’s decision to add the roof box for style, rather than an engineer thinking of the consequence of how it drives. Don’t be too surprised if one day there’s a V2 model without a massive roof box.
Next up is the Polestar 2. It’s the same car as was first revealed in 2022 but has been given a new yellow and satin white wrap for 2025 to bring it in line with the other two models. With its Thule roof rack and skis it looks mega. It’s still my favourite of the trio and feels like it’s the one that had the most time and money dedicated to it, and that shows with the way it drives.
Polestar downgraded the usually standard 20-inch alloys of a Performance model to 19s, while still managing to cram in the huge brakes, which fit with just millimetres to spare between the calliper and alloy. It’s the only one with paddle-operated launch control and both front and rear strut braces. The rear one sits towards the back of the boot, with Rydholm laughing as he tells me that he had to convince the design team that it could be used as a boot divider. And they fell for it too.
‘We wanted it to breathe with the road like a rally car’ says Rydholm, and it does just that. With the springs stiffened by 30 per cent, it’s rather firm, yes, but it’s the one with the sweetest steering and feels easiest to deploy all its power even in barely-above-zero temperatures. The Polestar 2 is getting on a bit in relation to the Swedish firm’s newer cars, but it was a properly developed and set up car more than able to still hold its own.
Anyway, last but not least is the Polestar 4. With 536bhp on tap in Long Range, Dual Motor guise, it feels by far the quickest and not always in the most controllable of ways in these conditions. It’s the only car showing battle scars from the racing the day earlier after getting a bit too sideways on one of the corners and the rear-quarter panel clipping the snow wall. Another journalist, who I won’t name, also got it stuck in the snow just before it was my turn to have a drive. Thankfully a few tow-rope purchases later it’s good to go.
The modifications it’s received almost make it seem James Bond-esque with its skis on the rear panel, which are perfectly positioned here to not block the camera that works instead of the rear-view mirror. A daft idea if you ask me, but a discussion for another day. Polestar has also fitted a hydraulic handbrake, which I’m sadly told I can’t use on tarmac. Killjoys! But if someone says Polestar 4 drift car, I’m not against the idea.
None of these cars are complete reinventions of Polestar’s existing cars but show and unlock further potential as the Swedish firm increasingly looks to revive its performance past; worth remembering Polestar was originally Volvo’s sporty arm because going it on its own. Whether its compromised financial outlook allows for a proper motorsport division isn’t clear, though. We’ve already seen the Polestar 2 BST created as a more extreme version of an existing car and the 3 and 4, the latter especially, could be finetuned further.
That said, Rydholm tells us: ‘These are one of a kind and there are no plans at this stage for production, it’s more a way of showing what we can do. But I’m so proud of them.’
The chief chassis engineer is now well underway developing the Polestar 5, which will be the firm’s new flagship when it launches in 2025. It uses a bespoke bonded-aluminium platform and, importantly, has been developed in the UK at its engineering base in Nuneaton. Ryholm comes over every few weeks to check on progress and work with the team.
‘The Polestar 5 is going well. We’ve created a GT car and when we are done it will be a crazy car to drive. There is so much knowledge, history and car experience in the UK. It is a perfect match.’
So, while Rydholm might not be able to pick his favourite car from the Arctic Circle collection, it seems that the new golden child will very much be the Polestar 5. And I can’t wait to see one with skis on the roof…