Polestar 2 BST Edition 270

Polestar bids to find out whether it’s possible to turn an everyday electric car into a high-performance handling hero It remains to be proven what kind of high-performance derivatives EV enthusiasts will be willing to pay for. Most car makers are still preoccupied by more fundamental questions, after all. Can we make an electric car affordable enough but still desirable? Can we make it light enough? Can we make it look good? Can we make it go far enough between charges? For many, going beyond remains a challenge for tomorrow.But EV specialist Polestar is ready to address it right now. Having such little brand baggage, the Sino-Swedish firm can go any which way it chooses, and will, in the fullness of time, propose several interpretations of what high performance looks like in an EV. The super-aerodynamic, rangey grand tourer; the low-slung, two-seat supercar; the spacious, muscular performance crossover: some are already in the product plan, and who knows what else could join them?It is experimenting first with a limited-run version of the 2 that has been given a particularly special suspension makeover to find out what kind of appetite there might be for an electric family hatchback with motorsport-style handling smarts – and what kind of driving experience might result. For now, it needn’t be a big appetite. Polestar is making only 270 examples of the Polestar 2 BST Edition 270 for the global market, 40 of which are coming to the UK and all of which have long been deposited on (ahem). On sales volume, that was a pretty easy target to meet, you might think. Then again, this is a £69,000 2, and it can be optioned up to Porsche Taycan money.Unlike with the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT or Kia EV6 GT, you get no extra power to justify the outlay here. The BST uses the same Performance Pack-spec motors as the 2 Long Range Dual Motor, making 469bhp and 502lb ft of torque between them. Polestar says that was a choice, not a restriction; that it wanted to focus on enhancements that would have a meaningful impact on the driver appeal of the car, rather than adding performance that the driver couldn’t ultimately use. And you can easily see the sense in that thinking, especially if you already know what so many of these super-fast but often sterile EVs are like to drive.Polestar has instead upgraded the 2’s suspension with plenty of commitment and with a little help from its friends. New 21in alloy wheels (forged rather than cast) are staggered in their width front to rear in order to improve handling stability. Specially developed Pirelli P Zero tyres are softer of compound than the regular 2’s, with the aim of improving steering feedback as well as outright grip. New coil springs lower the car by 25mm but are also even stiffer than their Performance Pack equivalents. There’s a new strut brace across the front uprights, too.And then there are the car’s new Öhlins dampers. Polestar dynamics boss Joakim Rydholm wanted finer manual configurability for the ride and handling. So, in combination with a new calibration for the single-way-adjustable Dual-Flow Valve dampers at the rear, he asked Öhlins to develop a new front-axle damping system with separately adjustable compression and rebound – the kind of thing it typically offers only for motorsport.What it came up with is a real feast for the eyes when you lift the Polestar’s ‘frunk’ cover to discover two beautiful-looking inboard remote damper reservoirs with braided hoses running to and fro. Those compression adjustment knobs front and centre look ripe to be twiddled. If you recognise what you’re looking at, the invitation to engage is almost irresistible. And if you don’t? They could almost be some ingenious, one-of-a-kind, EV-compatible nitrous injection system, if that made any mechanical sense whatsoever.There’s nothing new or special about the interior of the BST: not a single badge, graphic or accent trim. Yet it still feels like quite a special place to be. The driving position drops lower than you imagine it will, and feels more snug. The layout of controls and displays is wonderfully simple and makes you feel instantly at home. There’s a simplicity, too, about the cabin materials, although they remain tactile and appealing somehow. Perhaps a slightly more laterally supportive driver’s seat would have been a smart addition, although the standard one does the job okay.Polestar’s intuitive infotainment console lets you tailor some of the driving parameters very quickly and easily: whether it will creep when you lift off the brake pedal, whether you want one-pedal regenerative braking on a trailing throttle or just unchecked coasting, and how much power steering assistance you want. What it won’t let you do is properly tinker with the interaxle torque distribution of the motors, nor even fully deactivate the stability control. On a regular 2, drivers might not want to, but here I reckon both should be on the menu.Polestar feels like too mature a performance brand to mess about with drift modes and trick active differentials for the sake of it, but that doesn’t mean its customers wouldn’t like the option to decide for themselves what kind of throttle-on handling balance they might like in their car. That kind of thing really fosters driver engagement, and frankly, for nearly £70,000, they should be able to. Weren't electric motors supposed to make that sort of thing easier?The adjustability in the BST’s suspension means you can fine tune the chassis’s roll and ride characteristics, of course (although it’s a wheels-off job on a vehicle lift to do it properly). But while the stiffer springs, posh dampers and new wheels and tyres do undoubtedly combine to boost steering feedback, handling precision and body control, this car’s weight and its nose-centred, handling stabiility bias remain dominating factors when you begin to drive it quickly. It has remarkable ride sophistication, considering how much travel Polestar has discarded, with better composure on many surfaces than the oft-jittery Performance Pack car. But it’s not quite the sharpened-up, perfectly poised handling instrument that some might have hoped for.Our first test came on wet and chilly roads on which the BST telegraphed its adhesive limits very clearly. These conditions didn’t suit the car, and we hope we will be able to give it a fairer test soon. But in its default damper settings, it leans hard enough on its outside front tyre when turning in to slew more consistently into steady state understeer than a driver’s car probably ought to. During later-phase cornering, the chassis, although capable of holding a line, doesn’t subsequently give you options to neutralise its posture with power you were looking for. Even in this form, the 2 remains a heavy-feeling car, although the BST certainly rolls less and grips harder than any other derivative. The ability to give the front axle less of the tractive burden of hauling the car’s mass out of a bend and to engage the rear better might have made all the difference, but it has been left unexplored.It’s hard to find fault with the work that Polestar has done elsewhere; it’s just a shame that it didn’t do more of it or take a more holistic view. Because the BST feels like a car whose chassis, while impressive, is clearly several developmental steps ahead of its powertrain in its capacity to engage and entertain. And making an EV drive system successfully cross that Rubicon without resorting to silly party tricks or synthetic accompaniments continues to look like an insoluble problem.