To be honest, it's easy to see why many car enthusiasts find it hard to get excited about most electric vehicles. Many manufacturers have plied their trade and built their brand on exciting engines and exhaust notes, even if left outclassed when it comes to other, more practical areas of the car.
Making an EV appealing to car enthusiasts seems to be about as difficult as trying to flog green juice to beer drinkers, yet I think there's one which manages to hit the mark whether they realise it or not. Enter the Polestar 2 Performance – the EV made for those who like to take a spanner set to their car every weekend.
While there are plenty of performance EVs out there, this is the one which would speak to enthusiasts the most. For starters, it comes from a company that understands this market, with Polestar starting out in life as a racing team and then a tuning company which specialised in hotting-up Volvos.
This eventually led to an official partnership with Volvo to produce 'Polestar Performance' versions of the C30 and S60/V60 before being acquired in 2015. Since then, it's been turned into a standalone brand focused on building performance EVs just like this.
Given this start to the brand's life, it's no surprise that the Polestar 2 – the brand's first full EV, as the limited-run Polestar 1 was a plug-in hybrid – is a hardcore bit of kit. Indeed, the Performance version isn't a standalone trim level, but rather an option pack for the Dual Motor Long Range variant.
Much like the early examples of Hyundai's i30 N, it has the feeling of a 'skunkworks' build developed after hours by engineers who truly care about enthusiasts – something which later examples have obviously had to forego as the net widens to accomodate more mainstream buyers.
Consider not only the huge four-pot Brembo brakes with 375mm front discs which stop it on a dime, but also the manually-adjustable Öhlins Dual Flow Valve dampers with 22 settings to choose from. Many EVs forego uprated brakes in favour of just upping the regenerative braking, while any variable suspension systems have fewer settings and are controlled by a button or the touchscreen. Here, there's the innate need for an actual mechanical connection with the car.
That connection can be felt on the road as well, with its stiffer chassis and trick suspension delivering road feel unlike any other EV. Not only does it feel incredibly taut no matter how hard you push it, but it helps it hide its weight as well. The steering feels very familiar to many Volvo models given the shared platform, but that's no bad thing as it feels nice and progressive, if on the lighter side.
This phenomenal platform also allows you to take advantage of the Polestar 2's improved performance introduced for 2024 models like the one you see here; 2025 models only add insignificant things like tinted windows, along with revised pricing.
While Single Motor variants switched from front- to rear-wheel drive, Dual Motor versions like this mirrored that change by adding more power to the rear in particular. The result is an all-wheel drive vehicle with instantaneous power delivery that will easily get sideways if you have the right conditions and location for it.
Although too tight a road to get it sideways, Gorge Road in South Australia was the perfect road for exploring just how good its chassis really is. With a balance of all-wheel grip and an extremely flat ride, it made the absolute most of this road's mix of tight hairpins with bumps and dips, and long smooth turns with the perfect camber.
Ordinarily, I obsess over making sure cars are spotlessly clean for each article's photos, but I wanted to make the point of how much of a pleasure this is to drive. I easily racked up almost 820km over the course of my week with it, and left every bit of dirt on it to make that point clear.
This is a car you'll want to keep driving so much that you probably won't spend too long sitting there staring at it, even though it's a good looker. This one really is built for the enthusiast crowd.
2025 Polestar 2 Long Range Dual Motor Performance Pack
Price (MSRP): A$80,380
Engine: Dual electric motors, 82kWh lithium-ion battery pack
Transmission: 1-speed automatic
Drivetrain: AWD
Power: 350kW // 476PS
Torque: 740Nm // 546lb-ft
Acceleration (0-100km/h // 0-62mph): 4.2 seconds
Top Speed: 205km/h // 127mph
Weight: 2108kg
Economy: 20.8kWh/100km (as tested)
