The Polestar

Aug 31, 2024 — Reyan Chaudhry

My history with cars is a long one; I am by no means an old person but have managed to find myself behind the wheel of 13 vehicles, ranging from ones that date back to 1989 all the way to a Ford F-150 Raptor. My prostitution is eclectic though, it takes an enticing prospect for me to fork over my wallet and call a car my own, and until late last year I had my multitude of reasons to never do so for a new vehicle: depreciation, enshittification, over-complication—you name it.

I work in the car business, a profession which notably grants me access to most vehicles on the market, new or used. I find myself often saying that I've driven—at least once—just about every modern-ish car that I have realistic and reasonable interest in. While some may tout this as a perk of my career I find it has done little except turn me into a cynic and desensitize me to what may be most people's dream cars. I don't say that pretentiously though, I just have a very specific set of likes and dislikes when it comes to vehicle design/dynamics that pushes me towards a type of car that isn't really sold nowadays.

I'm not alone in this, the incredible showing at every Radwood event proves me right: that there is still a substantial community of people who appreciate the golden age of vehicle engineering that focused primarily on driver engagement and the performance of a vehicle's intended function. Understandably, the former is hard to attain nowadays. With the majority of the market being dictated by suburban parents and tech-obsessed millennials, it makes sense why most of what we see on the roads can be emulsified into one supreme CUV blob, with standard AWD of course.

It's the lack of conformity to the latter expectation though that numbs me to the current car market. I find that there are too many vehicles on sale trying to be multiple cars at once, M-lites and "performance crossover coupes" that I once considered fads now dramatically outsell cars that 15-year-old me would've mistakenly invested in. The roads here in DFW are littered with such vehicles, and even worse, with the abominable Teslas.

What difference can one man make?

Trying and Knocking

Curiosity does indeed tend to kill the cat. And despite my claims that one would never see me behind the wheels of a reliable, modern vehicle I found myself in September 2023 in need of a new car. My Infiniti G35 was remembering it's humble Nissan roots (transmission issues) and my E30 was far from being in daily driving condition. Having worked as a salesman for a while now I knew the ins and outs of getting a good deal on a car quite well and found myself eyeing some lease deals online.

Being the status-seeking and impressionable young man that I am I managed to convince myself that paying a fixed monthly cost for a heavily depreciating asset that would become someone else's problem after 3 Years/36,000 miles was a good idea, and thus set aside a $4000 down payment and began the search for my new vehicle. My requirements weren't awfully restrictive, said car would need to serve as my daily driver, be well designed, fun to drive, have a good sound system and most importantly have substantial pace.

Luckily there is no shortage of cars that met my expectations, and the hard part now just boiled down to figuring out which one was the right one for me. Although my original list of potential mates was long I managed to narrow it down quickly and over the course of a 6 or so weeks gave plenty of nearby dealerships a visit and noted my thoughts on the vehicles I was intersted in...

Audi RS3

Unique and fun car, the only turbo 5-cylinder on the market and it comes with an unforgettable exhaust note. The updated Haldex AWD and chassis tweaks make it a capable corner carver but also extremely fun to whip around, I didn't notice much (if any) of the understeer it is so commonly shamed for. It's stiff, sure, but in a car like with so much personality that particular trait is easy to forgive. The interior is straightforward Audi stuff and sound system was alright, although notably worse than the B&O in my '18 S4. I love it but in the end the slightly too brash design and extortionately high insurance quotes kept me from calling it mine.

BMW M340i

The best 3-series you can get without going full beaver mode. Numb steering and distasteful iDrive 8 interior become tolerable once the wonderful B58 engine starts pulling your heartstrings. xDrive or not it is fantastically quick and can seat 4 texan adults comfortably. The Harman/Kardon sound system was also impressive being that it was a sub-$1000 option. If a good friend of mine didn't end up buying one around the same time I might have done so myself.

Mercedes-AMG C43

Affalterbach's recent obsession with 4-cylinders is nothing short of depressing, and the C43 is a much worse car for it. Although the 4-banger has sufficient oomph, its accompanying transmission tuning leaves much to be desired and results in a very un-mercedes herky jerky experience regardless of user input. Rides stiffly and the new large-screen MBUX—while snappy and decent enough on its own—becomes disappointing when surrounded in a sea of fake carbon fiber and piano black trim. There are also some decidedly unpleasant haptic interactions in a lot of frequently used controls. This car isn't everything wrong with Mercedes nowadays but it does showcase most of it.

Cadillac CT4-V/Blackwing

GM's Alpha platform has never failed to impress me, dynamics are excellent on the CT4-V: incredible ride, great body control, precise damping and surprisingly talkative steering (for an EPAS rack). However the car is held back by it's mediocre interior/sound system and humble TurboMax powertrain. The Blackwing fixes the latter problem but comes at too much of a price premium for my liking. Excellent automatic and manual transmissions though (with one of the better rev-matching implementations I've encountered) and a sharp design.

Volvo S60 T8 Recharge Polestar Engineered

Volvo was one of the first brands to get the PHEV formula right, and the S60 is no exception. Great electric-only range meant this was probably the most wallet-friendly car of the bunch, and I'm stil shocked at how low insurance costs were for what is essentially Volvo's performance car flagship. One of the most underrated car designs of all time paired with a freakishly complicated powertrain seemed like just the right thing for me, and it almost was. Beautiful interior, decent handling and excellent B&W sound system. It falls short at the limits of its capabilities though and the 112mph top-speed is an unacceptably cheeky way to disguise the car's dynamic faults. It's an excellent daily driver but sadly I believe there was an excellent performance car here just a few million dollars worth of R&D away that will unfortunately die with the SPA platform in the future.

It's true what they say about Volvo seats though, they are the best in the business. Oh so comfortable, especially in that wool blend.

Honda Civic Type-R/Acura Integra Type-S

Limited availability and dealer markups aside (I worked for Honda at the time so I could bypass the latter) these are both some of the finest FWD vehicles ever made. The seats in the Type-R give me yearning to this day and no one does economy-car chassis tuning better than Japan. I took one under BVA for a week but found daily-driving a manual in Texas traffic to be a chore not worth its occasional golden moments. And although they are both practical vehicles neither flew enough under the radar for my liking. Amazing cars but just not what I needed at this point of life.

Long Story Short

You get the point, there was plentiful test-driving involved and despite my nit-picking I couldn't quite commit to any vehicle. As a last ditch effort I gave a shot to some Genesis's and Lexus's (Lexi?) but found none to my liking. Trucks and SUVs brought with them sizing I wasn't a fan of and unfortunately the legendary Renault Modus isn't sold here; so I was left with quite a few hours of spent time, hundreds of dealership spam emails and nothing to show for it.

A Chance Encounter With a Kia EV6

Having done all this I sort of set my car shopping journey to the side to give it some thought, maybe revelation would come to me by other means; and I believe it did. I was working late one night when a disheveled-looking Kia EV6 driver arrived at our dealership asking if he could borrow our company fast charger (which showed up on Google Maps for some reason) to jucie up his rental. Being that it was past 8:00PM and knowing how fast the Hyundai/Kia 800V cars tend to fill up, I obliged and told him to make himself at home while I took care of the charging. I drove his car to the back of our establishment and found myself momentarily shocked. Now, it's not like I hadn't driven electric cars before, I had the chance to sample a Tesla Model S Plaid and drove my fair share of assorted EV trade-ins in the past, although none for an extended period of time.

This time around though I thought more deeply about the EV driving experience, especially in the context of a lot of innovation we've been seeing in the ICE space lately. The goal—at least as far as I know—of all of these 48 vold mild hybrid PHEV torque fill CVT etc. systems we see being slowly stuffed into all of our beloved vehicles seems to be a few things:

• Smoothing out the torque curve from bottom to top
• Providing more oomph at the tip of the throttle pedal
• Smoothening out the operation of the start-stop system
• Removing the perception of multiple gears, either by using a CVT or high-count gearboxes with very relaxed programming.

If this list sounds oddly familiar, it's because electric vehicles happen to solve all of these problems without the need for overly complex electromechanical systems that have middling reliability prospects. Almost every EV on the market can flawlessly delivery instant and uninterrupted torque from standstill to VMAX, all with minimal NVH and respectable efficiency.

And yes, the argument remains that EV's tend to lack personality and most on the market still have subpar input tuning, but it's hard to deny their appeal as a no-nonsense daily driver vehicle. On top of the refinement and NVH advantages, an electric car (in theory...) has almost no mechanical reliability concerns and minimal maintenance requirements. The only real drawbacks are the inevitable battery degradation and severe initial depreciation, neither of which are a concern to me as a 3-year lease customer though, so they didn't apply to my use-case.

A New Hunt

And thus after this encounter I was sold on the idea of an EV for my daily, and began my search anew. The next morning I reached out to my former director at BMW Mini of Plano to see if I could get my hands on an i4 eDrive40, and he happily invited me over. Although I was impressed by its ride/handling and ability to disguise its 2+ ton weight, the modern BMW interior disappoints me greatly and I couldn't get myself to drive the beaver-grilled beast on a daily basis, so on I went to see my other options.

The Ioniq 5 is a car that is 20% larger than it need be, and the 6 is just plain hideous. Genesis as a brand has yet to convince me of it's virtues so I avoided their offerings altogether. Mercedes EQ products, despite being amorphous blobs, ride like clouds have decent interiors (if optioned right) and impressive efficiency; however their subpar brake-pedal and throttle calibration kept me from pulling the trigger. The Taycan and E-Tron GT, while being beautiful designs didn't stack up in terms of range and made me realize that perhaps being too fast is possible. I didn't even consider a Tesla, disgusting cars.

Having gone through all the obvious choices I found myself once again struck by indecision, none of these were objectively bad vehicles but all fell short in an area I deemed important, how tantalizing.

Enter Göteborg

The next week I found myself behind the wheel of a Volvo XC40 recharge, a short-term demo vehicle I was testing for a friend. Impressed by it's input tuning I did some research and found that its platform was actually shared by a rather attractive fastback, the Polestar 2. Although I had kept it in consideration earlier in my search I dismissed it due to it's FWD powertrain and lack of lease specials; but it turns out that for the 2024 model year the car received a mechanical (and visual) overhaul that made it RWD biased, something that really caught my eye.

I made my way to the local Polestar “Space” and gave one of the newer dual-motor vehicles a test drive. I found myself impressed. The Polestar team touts themselves as being very dynamics-focused and all for the driver but I found that marketing hard to believe. I stood corrected after my first few drives though, the throttle calibration was near perfect, the one-pedal-drive implementation very intuitive, and the steering wasn't half bad for being based on the same rack as the economy XC40 crossover. The car is visually also a work of art, which muscular proportions and the signature Thor's Hammer DRLs, I found myself quite liking it. I got to working numbers not too long afterwards and found my ideal spec—a black-on-black model with the performance package—in their Austin showroom, available within week-end.

An impulsive decision, for sure, but one I needed to make as the clock for a new car purchase was ticking. I was going to review this car the old fashioned way: by buying it first.

Ownership

Now to the part I've been making you all wait for, what I actually think about the car. The drive back from Austin was a pleasant one, the dampers were set halfway-compliant and handled the subpar texan Interstate well, while still allowing for some lane-switch hooning. Volvo's “Pilot Assist” did its job well, one of the better adaptive cruise control systems I've come across; although due to swedish conservatism it does miss out on some class-leading features such as hands-free driving and automatic lane switching. Neither of those are on my list of necessities though.

The interior is an extremely pleasant place to be, I opted for the WeaveTech seats, a slightly premium fabric reminiscent of neoprene. They share the same excellent design as Volvo seats, and the fabric material does a better job of supporting you in spirited driving than the available Nappa leather; though admittedly I wouldn't call them track ready, the toughest corners still have you exercising considerable core-strength to remain planted. Besides the seats the layout is excellent, classic scandinavian minimalism eases it's way throughout the car and all the touch points are pleasant, even the wiper stalks have excellent tactility. My only complain lies in the HVAC controls being screen operated, but the google-based infotainment is snappy enough that I don't really mind. I've gotten in the habit of just setting and forgetting most modern climate controls to 72 Fahrenheit and leaving it be anyways.

The sound system is also quite good, featuring great clarity and a stage-like front focused soundstage which I've grown to really appreciate. It also has built-in 10 band EQ which allows for a refreshing degree of fine-tuning should you desire to indulge in that. On a tangential note I've found myself very appreciative of Android Automotive OS, a native Youtube app is very nice to have while charging and having Google Maps built into the instrument cluster is something I miss in every other car I drive. The phone mirroring is unfortunately only wired but I honestly don't mind, almost every implementation of wireless Apple Carplay is so buggy and frustrating that I end up using a cable in most cars anyway, doing so also drastically improves media/sound quality.

It's impressively quick but not nausea-inducing. The best 0-60 time I recorded on the OEM SportContact 6 tires was around 3.8 seconds, well below Polestar's claimed estimate of 4.4. The handling is also deft and although there's little chance to explore the limits of a car on boring Texas roads, I've yet to find a situation in which its chassis disappoints. This is ironically a more capable vehicle in my estimation than its more premium S60 Polestar cousin—with a higher top speed to boot (127 mph).

Practicality is excellent of course, the cupholders and cubbies fit what I need them to and since it's a fastback the trunk is more akin to that of an SUV than a sedan, with lots of Volvo-esque features to aid in organization and whatnot. The seats also fold flat with the trunk and have no opening barrier, leaving behind just enough room for a twin-sized mattress topper: a fact I have taken much advantage of.

Efficiency has been great thus far, across multiple tire choices I consistently find myself outperforming the EPA tested 32KWh/100mi rating and real world range (even with my spirited driving) tends to float close to 230 miles—more than enough me and my occasional trip up to Oklahoma.

Knicks and Knacks

You get the point, the car serves my needs. It's modern where it matters and old school where I want it to be. I'm just about to close in on 15,000 miles and get just as giddy looking at it every morning as I did when I first got it, which is a good sign considering it's the first car I've driven for so many miles consecutively. It still turns heads despite Polestar becoming more mainstream and has helped me leave many a Scat-pack owner for dead, I can't complain.

Except I can. The car, and EV ownership as a whole, is not without its faults. OTA updates while mostly stable can sometimes fuck things up, as of today the A/C takes about 30 seconds to start after entering the car instead of blowing immediately, something easily remedied by in-app preconditioning but not really fun in Texas summer heat. It tracks ever so slightly left at speed after just a year of ownership and I sometimes hear a strange clicking noise during full lock low speed left turns. The rear seats could have more thigh support and there is an annoyingly large (and unfortunately scratched up) panel of piano black surrounding the gear lever.

Texas' charging infrastructure leaves much to be desired as well, which most fast charging stations having lines waiting for them at almost all times. Sure, that can be solved by installing a home/work charger but that shouldn't be the only option for someone wanting to daily an electric car.

A Conclusion

All in all though I can express little about this car aside from aside from excitement and how impressed I am by it. I mentioned earlier how I think there are too many cars nowadays that fail at the task of being everything at once and I believe the Polestar 2 is not one of them. It does not have one specific intended function (despite being marketed as a “performance fastback”) but manages to do many things well enough to be a worthy daily driver for any enthusiast, and if you're open minded about EVs it makes a compelling case for itself against some remarkable ICE competition.

The cost of ownership is refreshingly low too, I pay $650/mo on a lease with nothing down and charge at home for pennies on the dollar. For the 3 years I'll have this car I don't have any servicing to worry about and should I want to keep it after the fact I see no reason why I can't squeeze a problem-free 100,000 miles out of it. Considering the low residuals on EVs I don't think the latter is a bad option.

It fits my lifestyle well, leaves experiential room for me to still enjoy other vehicles (a recent complimentary pickup of mine is an R129 SL500) yet still is unique enough to be an undeniably intentional choice. In a sea of Tesla's and GLC300's I think it stands out without having to shout.