Polestar 2 Arctic Circle EV First Drive: One-Off Drift Circler

Polestar is a five-year-old startup in a young but growing EV segment rife with startups. How best to stand out? Lean into your Scandinavian heritage and be the brand that counters the prevailing opinion that EVs are bad in cold weather. Pursuant to this mission, Chinese-owned but Sweden-based Polestar built a WRC winter-rally-style project car and invited us way up north in February to try it out.

Nestled in the foothills of Canada's Laurentian Mountains, Circuit Mécaglisse lies about 55 miles northwest of Montreal, Quebec, and about 1,224 miles south of the Arctic Circle. But with average winter temperatures around 10 degrees F, the weather's arctic-ish, so the circuit gets a lot of use as a winter proving ground/playground for corporations and clubs. It features forest trails and groomed snow fields, ice circles, and curving, hilly circuits. It's the perfect place not only to demonstrate the one-off would-be rally-star Polestar 2 Arctic Circle but also to showcase the snowmobile strengths of mainstream 2023 Polestar 2 lineup as a whole.

As we outlined when Polestar first showed the Arctic Circle last year, it's basically a Polestar 2 Dual Motor with Performance Pack that gets a powertrain-output bump from 408 hp and 487 lb-ft to 469 hp and 502 lb-ft (so, the BST Edition 270's setup) riding on a suspension that's lifted 1.2 inches on springs that are 30 percent softer. Its custom-tuned three-way performance Öhlins dampers offer a range of settings, but for our drive they're set to a softer rate than the Perf Pack runs. The white OZ Racing Rally Wheels and studded winter tires, recovery hooks, and Stedi Quad Pro LED lights on this boxy hatchback really sell the Lancia Delta HF Integrale rally car vibe, but alas its livery is basic gray and white—no Martini racing colors.

Before experiencing the studded rally racer, we got a good feel for how the standard Polestar 2 behaves on snow and ice, shod in normal Michelin X-Ice Snow winter tires. The beauty of winter testing is that you get to experience chassis dynamic behaviors at modest speeds that otherwise only occur at dangerous velocities on pavement. On the winding, hilly snow course, for example, we could feel the one-pedal driving mode modulating the regenerative braking as the rear gently lost traction on an off-camber downhill curve. (This is a big challenge with electric cars, which can end up turning a wheel backward on ice if improperly modulated.) On the snowy/icy circles, with stability set to the more permissive Sport mode (sorry, there's no "off") and a bit of practice, we managed to achieve and sustain a solid 30-40-degree slip angle for more than one complete lap, by learning to lift slightly on the most highly polished quadrant of the circle then feather the accelerator on the snowier parts to reduce the amount of steering input required (big steering inputs quickly summon the nannies).

Our drive was limited to loops of a quarter-mile snowy/icy tri-corner oval where the back straight included a relatively deep valley that turn three climbed out of, and the front straight was like six lanes wide. This straight was set up with a broad chicane spaced and oriented to facilitate exiting turn three in a drift that we were meant to catch at just the right moment to snap back while coming around the first cone bank, and then snap again as we passed the second cone bank. Get it right, and the car could drift clear through turn one, straightening out in time to clear a box positioned to prevent us overcooking turn two and carrying too much speed (and/or slip angle) down the hill.

Outfitted with custom-made 245/35R19 studded winter tires (each with 490 metal studs protruding 4 mm), the car probably could have circulated this track at close to the speed it would run on dirt, but racing studs really destroy a meticulously groomed ice surface, so our Mécaglisse track hosts begged us to run Nokian Hakkapeliitta tires with less aggressive "street studs." Their grip probably ranks roughly halfway between that of the unstudded Michelin X-Ice Snow tires and those race studs.

Four base Polestar 2s running studless winter tires had made approximately five dozen laps of this little track during the morning session, polishing the ice in the chicane area to a glaze that made it nearly impossible to stitch together the intended right-left-right sequence of tank-slapping slides. The Polestar 2 Arctic Circle executed the maneuver with ease, and it wasn't just the street studs. We could feel the taller, softer suspension permitting more lean and side-to-side weight transfer, which helped immensely with those transitions.

Then we strapped in with two-time Daytona 24-hour class winner Jean-François Dumoulin for a hot lap of a three-quarter-mile better-groomed handling circuit, boasting lots of hills and tight curves, parts of which serve as an asphalt supermoto bike track in the summer. With packed snow for the street studs to dig into and a bit more contour to exercise the longer-travel, softer suspension, we started to get a better feel for how the Polestar 2 Arctic Circle would behave in its natural element—a rougher forest trail in a winter rally stage.

Timed WRC winter rally stages require a hard launch, so the Arctic Circle unveiled a launch-control system that's now available as part of the Performance Software OTA update offered on Dual Motor vehicles. There are no buttons—simply hold the brake and floor the throttle to preload the motors with a higher starting torque to unleash maximum launch torque when the brake is released.

This Arctic Circle car on snow is already way more fun to drive than the BST Edition 270 is on pavement. Nevertheless, we long to take another spin in Polestar's Arctic Circle project car next winter, when it's scheduled to be updated with the 2024 Polestar 2 powertrain. This setup will replace the front motor with a slightly less powerful AC induction motor while upgrading the rear permanent-magnet machine with more power and torque. In this arrangement, the rear does most of the work, while the front is depowered whenever it's not required (creating none of the drag an idled permanent-magnet machine causes). The meaningful result is a torque split that goes from 50/50 to 34/66 (184 lb-ft front, 361 lb-ft rear). This should transform the car's behavior, making it easier to initiate a drift or simply point the car around bends on those forest trails, while improving range. We'd love to see a matchup between an upgraded Polestar 2 making 475 hp and 546 lb-ft dicing through the forests with the similarly styled, also electric 671-hp, 649-lb-ft GCK Motorsport Lancia Delta EVO-e