Polestar: Blue Swedish Performance

Volvo is known for durability, toughness and boring…erm…I meant comfort. And they didn’t really focuses on performance, really. (Except the 850 T5-R and the S60R/V70R maybe)
But, Volvo has it’s dedicated tuner, painted in blue and it has a interesting race history. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Polestar.

Polestar was founded in 1996, under the name Flash Engineering and racing driver, Jan ”Flash” Nilsson founded the team and Volvo provided financial support and the cars. The team started it’s history at STCC (Swedish Touring Car Championship).
In it’s debut, tho, the team won the championship at the ‘96 season. Not bad for a racing team that just started it’s career.

After the splendid win, Flash Engineering continued to race in STCC. The original 850 racecar is replaced by the S40 in 1998, along with the addition of another racer, still made victories for the team.

The team moved from Halmstad to Karlstad ahead of the 2000 season. In 2001, the team joined European Touring Cars Championship and the same time, the one-make series Volvo S60 Challenge was introduced in Sweden with Polestar running the series. The Volvo S60 also replaced the ageing S40 in 2003.

Flash Engineering was renamed as Polestar Racing in 2005, by the new owner Christian Dahl who took over the team last year. In 2006, seeking independence on race car development, Polestar moved to new facilities in Gothenburg which included better engine development facilities for the team. Edward Sandström joined Robert Dahlgren in the STCC programme at the same year, with Sandström finishing fourth in the drivers’ championship.

At the year 2007, Polestar developed a bio-ethanol race engine for the STCC programme, becoming one of the world’s first race teams to compete with the environmentally friendly fuel. Although bio-ethanol might affect the car’s performance, according to the scientists, but, Polestar still won both the first and second rounds of the 2007 Swedish Touring Car Championship season.

Polestar replaced the S60 by developing the C30 racecar in STCC at 2008, marking the company’s first complete engineering project.
In 2009, Polestar became Volvo’s official Performance partner and Polestar Performance Optimisation, a performance optimization for regular Volvo road cars with turbo engines, was launched.
Polestar launched it’s first ever road car in 2010. It’s the Volvo C30 Polestar Concept, built to celebrate the company’s 2009 Swedish Touring Car Championship title.

In 2011, Polestar Racing went international by competing in FIA WTCC.
2012 is the year Polestar entered four Volvo S60s in the newly formed 2012 TTA – Racing Elite League in Sweden with drivers Tommy Rustad, Robert Dahlgren, Fredrik Ekblom and Thed Björk.
Meanwhile, the team launched a 506-hp Volvo S60 Polestar concept. The production model came the year after, making it the first production Polestar model ever built.

The team also famously, joined the Australian V8 Supercars in 2013. With the help of Garry Rogers Motorsport, two new S60 race cars based on the V8 Supercars regulations was made by Polestar. The team shocked the Australian V8 Supercars, being sucessful at winning races. In 2016, Garry Rogers Motorsport ended it’s partnership with Volvo, with the cars and engines to be returned to Sweden and Garry Rogers Motorsport switched to Holden Commodore VFs for the race.

Polestar’s racing arm has renamed as Polestar Cyan Racing in 2015, and the same year Volvo bought the performance road car division of the company, making it the new performance brand of Volvo Cars.
The new evolution of the Volvo S60 and V60 Polestar was unveiled in France at 2016, featuring a new 367-hp four-cylinder Drive-E engine, a new gearbox and lowered weight, receiving strong response in world media.

Meanwhile, the Polestar Cyan Racing team still competes in 2016 and this year’s FIA World Touring Car Championship with motorsport partner Cyan Racing as start of a multi-year programme. There was success on the racing circuits in Sweden as well with Richard Göransson securing a record-breaking fourth consecutive double Scandinavian Touring Car Championship title.

Polestar, bearing a blue badge, have served as Volvo’s racing and performance arm since it’s start. This badge, also made Volvo not becoming a stereotype for boring and plainess (Yes, even Volvo itself is a stereotype - for toughness)
That’s it for today. XD