The New Volvo S60 Polestar Engineered Is A Boot Away From Perfection

Here it is: the all-new S60, a car which looks…exactly how you’d expect. Just as the V60 is a miniaturised V90, the S60 is a slightly shrunken S90. And as was the case with the V60, we don’t care one bit. How good does it look?

It’s built on Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) in Charleston - making this the first Volvo to ever be built in the USA - and it uses an array of 2.0-litre petrol engines shared with other 60 and 90-series vehicles. There won’t be any diesel units in the range.

Kicking things off is the 246bhp T5, which will do 0-62mph in a VW Golf GTI-bothering 6.5 seconds. Next up there’s a twin-charged, all-wheel drive T6 with 306bhp on offer, or if you’d prefer, there’s a hybrid T6 ‘Twin Engine’ packing 335bhp.

The T8 hybrid develops 385bhp and a thumping 472lb ft of torque, dropping the 0-62mph time to 4.9 seconds. But if you want just a little more potency, you can upgrade to Polestar Engineered spec. And that’s where things get interesting.

As revealed by Volvo last week, this spec doesn’t bump the power up by much - the total power output from the twin-charged engine and electric motor is 409bhp, while the torque is at 494lb ft. We’re more interested in what Polestar has done to the chassis: we have Brembo mono-block brake calipers squeezing upgraded pads onto slotted discs, and super-plush Öhlins shock absorbers pinched from the Polestar 1. Oh, and a strut brace from the same car.

The whole shebang is finished with gold-painted brake calipers, and gold seatbelts. On anything else that’d be a bit tacky, but somehow for the S60, it just works.

Sounds like an enticing recipe, but there’s one problem: it’s not a wagon. Imagine that spec - gold finishings and all - on the V60. The desirability is suddenly ramped up to 11, isn’t it?

Thankfully, that will eventually become a reality - Volvo has confirmed that a Polestar Engineered version of the V60 is indeed happening, and it’ll be revealed in 2019. It’ll be joined by a Polestar-tweaked XC60 the same year.

As for the S60, the range will go on sale in the UK early next year. There’s no word on pricing yet, but expect it to have a similar starting price to the £31,810 V60.