Polestar or not, the S60 is one sharp-dressed sedan.
Steven Ewing/Roadshow
In the two years since I first drove the Polestar Engineered S60, Volvo’s really only changed one thing: the brakes. But this seemingly small tweak actually makes a huge difference. With this important piece of the performance puzzle sorted, the S60 Polestar Engineered is finally the fully realized sport sedan it always intended to be.
Like
- Potent hybrid performance
- The brakes aren’t awful anymore
- Gorgeous design, inside and out
Don’t Like
- More expensive base price than rivals
- T8 powertrain sounds wheezy
- Sensus infotainment is still a little buggy
The hardware was never the issue; the big, six-piston Brembo front brakes provided lots of stopping power. But the electronic brake-by-wire software — where the brake pedal sends a signal to a computer, which then tells the brakes what to do — was poorly tuned. Volvo tweaked the software and made a few minor hardware changes, resulting in a braking experience that not only provides better feedback to the driver, but vastly smooths out the transition between the S60’s regenerative and mechanical braking.
The old brakes were so hard to gauge that you’d unknowingly apply too much pressure, the nose