Controlled Aggression

The most violent Scandinavian has landed on Indian shores. Time to see if it can challenge the Germans on a racetrack

- Agasti Kaulgi

It’s that time of the year when Top Gear heads to the racetrack with a bunch of cars from all over the world, which love being thrown around hard. While Germany has sent the best from its shores, Sweden has chosen this, the Volvo S60 Polestar. It’s the fastest and the most aggressive Swede around, and it’s purpose built. Distinguishing itself from the regular S60, it has a small, tiny badge on the grille that whispers rather than announce its intent; it reads ‘Polestar’. It’s here to teach the Germans a lesson and the Swedes have used all the tricks up their sleeve to make it angry and... fast.

While the Germans have employed a big engine with many cylinders, this, the Volvo S60 Polestar, has only four. Does that make it frail in any way? Is it the best they could manage? Will it shy away from setting a great time around the circuit? Well, to tell you more about its firepower, allow me to go back a couple of years. When Volvo got this out, it set a new record – it was the most powerful four-pot engine in the world. It generates 362bhp and a massive 470Nm of twist. Volvo has managed to bring out that sort of power from this small an engine is because they’ve turbo- and supercharged the engine. Fast forward a few months from there, and Merc gave their AMG-tuned four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine a few more horses and stole away the title from Volvo.

But never mind. 362bhp and 470Nm is plenty for a car this size and enough to give the six-cylinder engines from around the world a run for their money, and importantly, enough to propel this family sedan from 0-100kph in a mere 4.4 seconds. Yeah, you read that right.