Norev 1:43 2020 Polestar Hybrid, Osmium Gray

Polestar is an automotive brand jointly owned by Volvo Car Group and its parent company Geely. It is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden with production taking place in Chengdu, China. The company develops electric performance cars and offers performance hardware upgrades and engine software optimisations for Volvo models through their Polestar Engineered division.

The Polestar name originates from the STCC Polestar racing team which spawned Polestar Performance AB, in turn acquired by Volvo Cars in July 2015. The racing team changed its name to Cyan Racing, while maintaining close ties to both Volvo and Geely, later focusing on Polestar sister brand Lynk & Co.

In June 2017, Volvo announced Polestar would begin producing high-end electric performance cars under its own name and badge, to compete with brands such as Tesla Motors. Polestar also functions as an innovation lab for the Volvo Car Group, developing designs and technologies of a more experimental nature.

The company origins can be traced back to the foundation of Flash Engineering in 1996, a Swedish racing team competing in Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC). The team was later sold and rebranded to Polestar Racing, starting to engineer their own racing Volvos in the late 2000s. In 2009 the brand became the official Volvo partner to modify existing models, under the brand Polestar Performance. Volvo eventually bought the company and brand in July 2015, offering Polestar enhanced models directly from their resellers.

Polestar has also produced prototype cars, with the first and most famous being the C30 Polestar Performance Concept Prototype (2010) with over 450 bhp and 510 Nm.

The Volvo S60 Polestar Concept is the heir to the C30 Polestar, featuring 508 BHP from a modified T6 engine, launched in June 2012. The car sprints from 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 3.9 seconds with a top speed of over 300 km/h (190 mph). American car magazine Motor Trend tested the car at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca where it broke the lap record for four-door cars, matching the lap time of an Audi R8.

Under the label Polestar Engineered, Polestar offers enhancements for Volvo cars which deliver better performance. Examples are engine optimisations with retained warranty and unchanged fuel consumption and emissions. The engine optimisation increases the power and torque output, varying depending on engine model. The response of the throttle can be modified and the character of the transmission is tweaked.