The 2017 S60 Polestar is a most intriguing car

Jonathan Gitlin

The Volvo S60 Polestar is unlike every other Volvo we've driven recently. For one thing, it's not a brand-new model; the regular S60 it's based on first appeared in 2010. For another, it's an extremely eye-catching-some might say retina-searing-shade of blue; this car sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. Third, it was, for some time, the fastest four-door production car to lap the Ni1/4rburgring Nordschleife. That's right-this a Volvo with a 'Ring record. Intrigued? We sure were.

What's a Polestar?

Audi has Audi Sport. BMW has its M Division. AMG is the Mercedes-Benz equivalent. And at Volvo, there's Polestar. For the past two decades, Polestar has been campaigning Volvos in motorsport. More recently, it has been applying that knowhow to road cars, starting in 2014 with an earlier iteration of this S60 (and the V60 wagon). There's precedence for this; in the 1990s, Volvo shook up the British Touring Car Championship by entering a pair of very fast station wagons that did much to inspire a new kind of Volvo fan, shifting a lot of T5 and T5-R models in the process.

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