Polestar 5 shows playful side

Passenger ride in the Swedish firm's potent, 2024 flagship EV puts Taycan on notice

- RICHARD LANE

The highly anticipated Polestar 5 will arrive next year, promising "supercar levels" of body stiffness from an all-new platform, plus a targeted power output of 874bhp and 663lb ft of torque.

Now, just over a year away from the reveal of the Swedish brand's new flagship EV, we have been given a spot in the passenger seat to see how the Porsche Taycan rival - and the first Polestar to be developed in the UK - truly feels.

A SIDEWAYS REVELATION

As a means of getting familiar with an all-new car, passenger rides are a bit of a blunt instrument. But sometimes the car in question does something so novel, and does it so effortlessly, that it doesn't matter which seat you're sitting in because the cat's just as far out of the bag.

This is what happens during our passenger ride in a leggy, pre-production Polestar 5 on the Dunlop dry handling circuit at the MIRA proving ground a circuit Autocar road testers know quite well because it's where we set the magazine's benchmarking lap times.