Shaping up to be a serious sports saloon.
When Volvo and Polestar decided to go their separate ways, we were reassured that the relationship would remain warm, and there would be continued cooperation between the two brands. That was no surprise though: As we’ve come to learn, Polestar vehicles will continue to borrow heavily from Volvo architecture (but then again, everyone in the Geely Group does), and act as a way to offer true, uncompromising performance without unduly risking the brand values that Volvo espouses.
Of course, since then, we haven’t heard much about optimisation of Volvo vehicles. Until now that is, because Volvo’s saying that its upcoming S60 “sports saloon” will come out the gates next week with a T8 TwinEngine Polestar Engineered variant, which will see everything dialled up to eleven.
“Electric cars are our future. Today starts a new era of Volvo electrified models, enhanced by Polestar’s engineering prowess. This strategy is firmly grounded in our shared belief in an electric future for the car industry.” — Håkan Samuelsson, President & CEO, Volvo Cars
The hot S60, slated to make its global debut next week, will use a reworked version of the T8 TwinEngine petrol-electric plug-in hybrid system that we’ve seen before in the XC90, and S90 among others. In standard guise, that powertrain puts out an already-considerable 300kW/640Nm, with further Polestar optimisations (as seen on the aforementioned models) capable of pushing that up to 314kW/680Nm (a 14kW/40Nm increase). However, the Polestar Engineered S60 will make 309kW and 670Nm, which is more than standard but less than a Polestar-optimised XC60 T8. Weird.
But power is only half the story. The true value in Polestar optimisation parts come from the sum of the experience, when all of the little revisions work together to provide a near-peerless driving experience. To that end, Volvo has thrown in as many improvements as they could. There are monoblock Brembo brake calipers, painted gold, biting down on slotted brake discs that sit beneath (also gold) Öhlins shocks front and rear.
The shocks are nicked wholesale from the insane Polestar 1, which means that they’re fully adjustable. Also stolen from the big GT is the front strut brace, which increases torsional rigidity. A variety of other changes, like the lightweight (and totally gorgeous) alloy wheels and gold seatbelts wrap up the changes.
The new Volvo S60 will be shown to the world next week, at the company’s first-ever manufacturing facilities in the US. Production of the S60 will, predictably, be focused there and exported the world over, though we’re taking that claim with a pinch of salt.
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