The latest Polestar model to receive the BST treatment is the forthcoming 6, albeit it in concept form. Enter the Concept BST, which has made its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, taking to the Hill as part of First Glance presented by heycar.
The open-top Polestar 6 is the kind of concept that’s clearly close to production. While it doesn’t signal its performance intent to the same extent as the Concept BST will, it won’t exactly be lacking in pace. With 896PS (659kW), the 0-60mph time is expected to be little more than 3 seconds. It has been engineered alongside the 5 using its bonded aluminium Polestar Performance Architecture platform.
Swedish visual understatement is steamrollered by unfiltered performance intent. The bespoke bodywork is festooned with slashes and vents, there’s an aggressive splitter up front balanced by a huge gooseneck wing at the tail. Lairy motorsport graphics complete the look.
Polestar’s BST performance brand started out as a skunkworks project. Head of Chassis Development Joakim Rydholm engineered a hotter version of the Polestar 2 in secret and presented the finished result to CEO Thomas Ingenlath. He used the car daily, and found a way of putting it into production, by which time visitors to the Polestar HQ would comment on the ‘Beast’ parked outside. The name – if not the vowels – stuck, and the BST brand was born.
‘Could’ is the operative word there. Let’s not get too carried away, this is, after all, a concept so it’s entirely possible that showrooms will never be darkened by such a statement car. But there have already been two iterations of the 2 BST, so perhaps a halo model will get the green light.
Ingenlath commented: “This car is a demonstration of how far we can push our performance brand – Polestar turned up to 11, if you will – and a demonstration of how we could apply the BST formula to our line-up in the future.”
Polestar’s sportier future stars line up with the current three-car line-up, the 2, and the 3 and 4 which can be seen also part of First Glance at the Festival of Speed this weekend.
Setting off with a cloud of dust behind it, the Polestar 6 completed its run on the Hill as part of First Glance presented by heycar on Thursday, joined by both the Polestar 3 and 4.
For the onlooking crowds, there was no doubting which car this one was, though; it flew past with its large striped number ‘6’ design on the sides and hood as the silver colour underneath shone in the sun. The Polestar 6 made our Hillclimb look like a breeze, something the incumbents would know plenty about as they enjoyed the fresh air from the cabin of this convertible EV.
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