Polestar Pinnacle: Volvo Launches Its Quickest Models Ever

Blame the Swedish engineers who came up with the design for this (if you have to blame anyone by using nationality or ethnicity...). Polestar has been doing this type of thing for years. RIP Hummer (the brand, not the commenter). Now those were badly designed vehicles for non-combat zones -- dangerous lack of visibility, lack of standard safety features, and the ability to attract the most self-centered (read: dangerous) drivers into their showrooms. GM tried to sell Hummer to a Chinese company but couldn't even do that right.

@barksdale "Now those were badly designed vehicles for non-combat zones — dangerous lack of visibility, lack of standard safety features, and the ability to attract the most self-centered (read: dangerous) drivers into their showrooms. " Care to go into depth? I have better visibility than the majority of all vehicles leaving the showrooms today, getting back into my trucks are a breath of fresh air for being able to see. What lack of safety features? The H1 is known for its minimal damage in wrecks, the H2 was rated only behind the F350 as the safest vehicle on the road, and the H3 has all of the standard safety equipment that is used industry wide. If you would like to see a couple stereotypes about your vehicle, let's do a little show and tell, but I would hardly call us owners anything close to that description. Re: Volvo, or blame the Chinese owners that has allowed the automaker to use such convoluted methods to end up with a product worse by the numbers than a conventional setup. At least the Hummer brand died a dignified death without being weakened by poor product that was incompatible with the brand line.

Hummer, Swedes have a long experience building high-output turbo motors that last and last. I know lots of Saab owners with a quarter or a half million kilometers and no issues. Rumor is many Saab engineers went up the road to Volvo, and it's probably not a coincidence that Volvo is releasing state-of-the-art turbo motors five years after Saab tanked. I don't think there's an issue here. The real story is how badly GM and Ford messed-up when they owned those brands. Now they have nothing competitive in the premium market, while Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover are enjoying record sales and profits.

In their entire history, Volvo's offered just one engine over 4 liters (which they farmed out to Yamaha and no one bought), it's not who they are. Either slow, indestructible four cylinders, or smallish boosted engines are predominately Volvo's DNA. Lucky for them, the market kind of came in their direction. It's a shame they dropped the inline six, but for being a fairly unique selling point, it didn't really push them to success.

@Maymar The indestructible slow engines are pretty much how Volvo has went, why they want to go boi racer is the question, Saab treaded a very odd line that was never here nor there, and I just can't see Volvo adopting that and running with it. Maybe they can, but if they want to blaze a new trail for the company, they should try to race at the top of the league away from the bottom feeders.

Hummer, I don't think that anyone at Volvo is seriously considering following GM's Saab game plan! Give them a little credit, all the evidence so far shows that Chinese or Indian ownership is a lot more beneficial than GM/Ford ownership. I would have thought this would have occurred to you already, given your screen name.

@heavy handle Saab was always doomed, GM just delayed the inevitable by about 10 years.

@heavy handle Response to Jim Z; Saab died due to the 2008 banking lockup. Most SAABs were leases-when banks stopped lending, SAAB dealers died. One local dealer gave his stat to a local paper...they moved 25-30 units a month. 28 of them were on a lease. No lease=no sale. I had two of them, an OG 900T and a 9-3. I've mostly happy memories.