Polestar plans fours with more

Volvo’s performance partner looks forward to 400kW four-pot engines

Volvo’s triple-charged 336kW 2.0-litre petrol engine is a couple of years away from powering a high-performance Polestar model.

But watch out when it does arrive, warns Polestar boss Christian Dahl, because by then it could be pumping out even more power.

400kW? “Absolutely, it (the current output) is the start-up of the project,” he told motoring.com.au at the Bathurst 1000 last week.

“It is basically a standard engine still and you have this fantastic, tremendous horsepower, but more important you have the torque at low revs you never got from small engines as standard.

“It has been a fantastic project and it can pave the way for the future. So absolutely we are going to have a look at that in a couple of years.”

Dahl, whose company co-developed the engine with Volvo and motorsport partners AVL and Denso, said time was needed to troubleshoot issues such as reliability.

“But it is absolutely the right way to go,” he insisted. “We already knew that we were going to have the performance and power and now there are more questions to answer before we put it in a road car.

“But it is looking very, very good so far.”

The only Polestar-tuned Volvo production models currently offered are the mid-size S60 sedan and V60 wagon, which are powered by a 257kW 3.0-litre inline six-cylinder.

But both XC60 SUV and V40 compact hatch models are under development at Polestar and tipped to arrive in the near future. The expectation is that a production version of this ultimate Drive-E engine could power them.

The 300kW-plus force-fed four could also power performance versions of a potential new Volvo sports flagship, previewed by the Concept Coupe (pictured).



However, Dahl was coy about future products: “We work on a lot of models and we want to increase our range of course.

“But it is still early days for Polestar in performance cars. We want to make sure we do it the right way, not just kick out new models all the time; follow up on the cars and follow up on the customers and see what they think and learn from that.”

The S60 and V60 are expected to make the transition to four-cylinder when next-generation models sitting on Volvo’s new VEA architecture – which debuts under next year’s XC90 -- arrive in 2016.

They are expected to be the very last Volvo models to transition to four-cylinder power. Dahl is enthusiastic about the benefits the Drive-E package can deliver, apart from acceleration.

“It can have a good influence on the car because it is much lighter (than the I6), so you can do more with the chassis, the brakes, the suspension and everything. It looks the way forward.”

He also — understandably — endorsed a V8 Supercars move away from V8 engines to turbocharged four-cylinders. The category is currently considering its future engine rules as part of an over-arching study of its structure beyond 2017.

“I think it is the right way to go to open up for more cars and more modern cars because there is not a lot of them on the road that have a V8 any more,” said Dahl.

“I don’t think it is a do or die, but the more correlation you have between the race car and the standard car the easier it is to use and be credible and so on.”