Polestar: Volvo's power and performance partner

Polestar is not a household name, even among motoring enthusiasts. For Australians the small company can perhaps be summed up as a counterpart to Volvo's performance marketing in much the same sort of role that HSV fills with Holden.

"Polestar started as a spin-off [from] the British Touring Car Championship [in 1996]," explained the company CEO, Hans Baath. "Volvo decided to bring home one of those cars... and race them in Sweden. We didn't have a proper racing championship at that time, so the championship was started [through] cooperation between Volvo, this company and Ericsson — the largest phone company service provider in Sweden — riding on the success of the British Touring Car Championship."

According to Mr Baath, Polestar was effectively a mere race team in the BTCC. Its cars, including the iconoclastic 850 wagon, were actually built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing. Only after some experience in the championship did Polestar become a provider of parts and tuning expertise to other companies, including Prodrive, for its S60 that ran in the S2000 category from 2003 to 2006. Polestar was responsible for the engine, which was tuned to run on bio-ethanol and discharged its exhaust through catalytic converters — something of a long-standing innovation in motor sport circles.

Around the same time, the company began to delve into tuning road cars. The racing program continued however, with the company exclusively preparing the C30 for the domestic championship and "a couple of races" in the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) S2000 category, between the years of 2007 and 2011.

"We are a bit proud of that," Mr Baath said, "that is the most victorious Volvo racing car..."

The engine powering the S2000 C30 features the 'VEA' (Volvo Environmental Architecture) design that will find its way into Volvo production models in future. According to the MD of Volvo Cars Australia, Matt Braid, the VEA engine is a family of four-cylinder engines that will supplant all other engine types — and not least of all the volume-selling in-line five-cylinder powerplants — for upcoming models.

Around the second quarter of last year, Volvo informed Polestar that the manufacturer wanted the tuning firm to refocus its efforts on a new model and a new championship: the S60 for the TTA Racing Elite League. This year both Volvo and Polestar have fielded separate teams in the category, which owes something to Australia's own V8 Supercars, according to Mr Baath.

"Later on, during 2011, we got the direction to run the cars in the Swedish Elite Racing League. As a league it's very similar to the V8 Supercars in Australia. We actually went down there to learn a little about the setup of the championship."

The cars in each championship are very different and V8SC is a lot closer to production standard than the Swedish cars, but Car of the Future regs will bring V8SC a little closer to the silhouette formula of the TTA Elite Racing League. Polestar's S60s (for the Volvo team as well as Polestar's) run the same 3.5-litre Renault/Nissan V6 mounted longitudinally behind the driver in a space-frame chassis and driving through a transaxle to the rear wheels.

"The V8 Supercars are a very successful championship for a smaller market," said Mr Baath, explaining how the local racing formula offered some virtues that could be transferrable to Sweden's domestic category. "You're a big country, but not that many people... the same here."

"To be able to run proper racing in a small market you need something that actually works."

Although Polestar's road-car tuning efforts have been a recent initiative, Volvo can point to a long (if chequered) history of performance tuning for its production cars. As far back as 1967 the Swedish manufacturer was offering customers upgrade options for the standard cars. But with in-house performance tuning falling in and out of favour during the years in between, there were frequently windows of opportunity for what Mr Baath calls "pirate tuning" firms to fill the gap left by Volvo's fragmented performance program.

It wasn't always a happy experience for the customer.

Polestar's performance tweaks for Volvos came on the market in 2006. Fully "optimised" Volvos were being offered from 2009. To date 20,000 cars around the world have had the Polestar magic wand waved over them. The standard warranty is not voided and the cars continue to be serviced by Volvo technicians in branded dealerships, using compliant parts and consumables. According to Mr Baath, the warranty claims for the Polestar-enhanced Volvos are lower in number than the standard cars.

"We don't have any clear explanation, but there are actually less [warranty claims] on things that are connected to the engine and drivetrain. In many of the models, the amount of claims are [fewer] than [for] the standard car. You could speculate that people who invest money like this — in their car — are a little bit more interested in their car."

In 2012 Polestar employs around 50 people and continues to work closely with Volvo, but the tiny firm also remains fiercely independent.

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