Allen says the UK is an ideal place to develop cars because it’s the home of most F1 teams and niche car manufacturers, and quite a few premium brands. There’s a great deal of expertise to draw on.
The Polestar 5 and 6 have a hot-cured bonded aluminium construction, which is more cost-effective for lower-volume vehicles. They share a bespoke skateboard platform, designed to be easily shortened for the open-top car, and strong enough to forgo the bracing normally provided by a roof.
The 6 will be a two-seater, most likely a hardtop convertible.
There will be two versions of the 5, one with rear-wheel drive and about 440 kW, the other with all-wheel drive. Allen won’t confirm rumours the latter will have 650 kW and 900 Nm, but calls the 5 a “very high-performance offering” in either form.
We had the opportunity to see, and be driven, in a lightly camouflaged version. The car appears quite similar to the Precept Concept that foreshadowed the 5 in 2020, though the “suicide” rear-hinged rear doors have gone. Allen explains the latest moving barrier side-impact tests “give a real challenge to anybody with non-conventional doors … the lack of the B-pillar is a key thing. It’s not that it’s undoable, but you’d end up with incredibly heavy doors.”
The powerful four-door Polestar 5 is due to be launched next year. The car will use a camera for rear vision.
The 5 is 5080mm nose to tail, longer than Porsche’s Taycan or Panamera and Audi’s A7, with the aim of giving what Allen calls “a first-class journey in the second row”. The legroom is certainly generous, the rear bucket seats classy, and the headroom back there improved by the long, gently raked roofline. The 5 will use a camera rather than a window for rear vision.
As for the driving (or passengering) experience, the rear-drive pre-production car was exceedingly quick on the narrow twisty test track, and hung on for dear life even though it was raining. But it was hard to learn a lot more than that.
The Polestar 6 with the top down. It will compete against the Maserati GranCabrio Folgore EV and anything Porsche may yet unveil.
Steve Swift, head of vehicle engineering, says the objective with the 5 is to provide maximum enjoyment rather than ultimate performance. It will initially do without rear-steering and some other advanced chassis systems. Such things add weight and drain power, he says, and are often fitted to compensate for other compromises, such as a platform shared with sedans and SUVs.
“If the envelope is as large as it can be from the start, which is what our aspirations are with Polestar 5, then a lot of those additional aids … you can use to enhance the experience rather than trying to fix an error state.”
As a former Lotus engineering head, Swift says a lot of the appeal of sports cars of yesteryear, such as the Lotus Esprit, was that you had to be a “proper driver” to get the best out of them. “Is that the world we want to be in, if we don’t have to?”
Polestar’s Pete Allen says any driver should be able to enjoy the capabilities of both cars.
Allen adds that any decent driver should be able to enjoy 90 to 95 per cent of the capabilities of a modern sporting machine such as the 5 or 6. “There’s no point having performance if the performance is not accessible. You have to know and feel, be able to get close to the limits of the car, and to know that you’re approaching the limits of the car in a controllable way.
“Then, if you have that extra expertise, fine. You can push it and get the extra few per cent.”
How close Polestar comes to its lofty targets will be revealed from next year.
Read next in Motoring by Tony Davis
Source
https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/cars-bikes-and-boats/these-two-high-performance-polestars-could-challenge-porsche-20230722-p5dqeq
