Volvo V60 Polestar: Speak softly, carry a big stick, dress like a Smurf

If fast shooting brakes are cool, this is from planet Hoth

A gentle experience for one's posterior, dear boy

What’s reassuringly non-sports car is the ride. Helped by the excellent seats, it’s nothing like as harsh as you’d expect from those big wheels and sprayed-on tyres. It’s a composed cruiser and good cross-country hack. The springs are 80 per cent firmer than the cooking V60 and anti-roll bar rates are up by 15 per cent, but it’s not racing-car crude.

With the last Volvo we reviewed, it was the infotainment system which was the highlight. It split the controls between a touch screen and real buttons to have the best user interface of any car we’ve reviewed. Fortunately, the V60 Polestar is identical. It has the same attention to detail, with the speedo showing the area where the needle is with a brighter glow to lead the eye, the ease of Bluetooth sync and more. Go and read the XC60 review for the details. One of the settings under the “My V60” option is for steering weight. This is best set to "heavy".

The V60 Polestar continues the famous tradition of excellent Swedish ergonomics

The reason it’s not the highlight here is the dynamics. The V60 is a hoot to drive. It’s also well appointed. One interesting feature is a compass in the rear view mirror. It’s not something we’d seen before. There are heated seats, a tilt-and-slide sunroof and the heated steering wheel is leather on the outside and alcantara on the inside of the rim.

Mirror-mounted compass: useful for extended trips to the cash machine

The seats don't just hold you well, they also look sporty with the highlight blue stitching and are electrically adjustable, with memory buttons. There is keyless go, blind-spot indicators and the “you are too close to the car in front” lights as a head-up display.

Passengers reported the back to be a good place to be, and it’s an estate car, albeit not a particularly big one. It swallows 430 litres with the seats up and 1,241 with them down. Fine for the vast majority of the time but no rival to some of the more mainstream estates. With the rear seats down, it’s 200 litres smaller than an Audi A4.

The boot is not the biggest, but it's roomy enough for most purposes

Fuel economy is sadly pathetic. The official figures for exhaust emissions and fuel consumption in the EU Combined cycle show 237g/km and 27.7mpg. But it’s not a car you drive with a gentle right foot. I often saw fewer than 20mpg.

This is a car for those who know about cars. Perhaps the managing director of a small company who wants something that isn’t Panamera flash. But with only 750 being made and only 125 of those coming to the UK, it’s really rather special. All Polestars are estates. That exclusivity comes at a price. It’s 20 per cent more than the equivalent BMW 335i M Touring and nearly 25 per cent more than the Audi S4 Avant.

There is a kind of fourth wall in car reviewing, which is erected to cover up the decadence of some of the activities. One glosses over cars arriving with a full tank of petrol and leaving with only a polite amount for the chap who picks it up. One tries to avoid actually spending any money on fuel. This changes for special cars, ones which you want to drive a little bit more. The Polestar certainly qualified for this. My own folding stuff went into furnishing the Volvo’s tank.

Another indication of how much I liked it was a trip to the bank machine. It's a journey I could walk, but I took the Polestar. I then drove straight past the bank and on for a half-hour spin around the roads near home, just for the fun of driving it. When was the last time you went for a drive that wasn’t just about getting to where you were going? ®