Words by Donal Byrne. Video by Leah Carroll.
Anyone who considers Polestar cars to be a tad over conservative and designed principally with a safe Scandinavian minimalist hand will be more than surprised when they see the new Polestar 5 Grand Tourer.
The 5 is long (4.8 metres), low and sleek and has a dramatically sloping roofline that gives it an extremely low drag coefficient, thus allowing air to flow over it with maximum efficiency. It is not a car designed with functionality as its best asset - it is designed to be a supercar rival to competitors such as Porsche's Taycan.
And the figures back up its effort to join the super-league. There are two versions - Dual Motor and Peformance - the first having an output of a stonking 748 horsepower and the latter having an 884 horsepower. These are more in line with racing car outputs than almost anything else on the road.
The Dual Motor will reach 0 to 100 kph in 3.9 seconds, and the Performance will achieve the same in 3.2 seconds, but will anyone need or want to reach a legal speed in these times?
The claimed ranges are 678 km for the DM and 558km for the Performance, but the usual caveat for claimed ranges applies.
The prices will also mean the Polestar 5 won’t be a common sight on Irish roads, with the Dual Motor coming in at €130,700 and the Performance at an equally eye-watering €145,700. A Porsche Taycan with similar performance will set you back around €162,000, incidentally.
We had a brief showroom preview of the car this week, so there wasn’t an opportunity to see whether the car matches the degree of hype surrounding it, but we liked what we saw.
There are so many well thought out design features, such as the tiny Polestar logo at the side of rear light cluster and the gold brakes on the Performance version, that the car looked like it was assembled from hundreds of jigsaw pieces all put together seamlessly.
Inside, it’s really a four-seater, and the rear seats recline for extra comfort. There’s a 14.5" centre screen at the centre of the cocooned cockpit. Touches include four-zone climate controls for each seating area.
Like the Polestar 4, there is no rear windscreen. It is replaced by a high-definition camera that reveals everything behind you, but it won’t be to everyone’s taste because it is a dramatic and sometimes unsettling change from the norm.
The boot has a modest 365 litres capacity, and I suspect you won’t get a set of golf clubs in there easily without folding the rear seats forward.
The Polestar 5 has a maximum five-star EuroNCAP crash test programme rating.
The 5 will be launched in summer, but is available for preview at the Polestar showrooms in Dublin for those undaunted by its price.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
