Volvo S60 Polestar breaks Nurburgring record. But shush, Volvo don’t want anyone to know

The Volvo S60 Polestar broke the Nurburgring record for a four-door production saloon in 2016, but only now has Volvo revealed the achievement.

The latest Volvo S60 Polestar is a performance Volvo from their now in-house tuning arm, Polestar, and although it doesn’t have the profile (yet) of BMW’s M or Mercedes’ AMG, it does do some good work.

We’re not talking about the small increases in power and a bit of chassis fettling you get with the Polestar Performance Package, but a fully sorted, fully-fledged Polestar take on the Volvo S60.

Admittedly, with 362bhp from its 2.0 litre Drive-E engine, the S60 Polestar is a bit down on power compared to German rivals, but it seems it’s still enough to get the S60 round the Nurburgring in a record-breaking time.

Cyan Racing, Volvo’s Polestar race team, took the opportunity last year at the Nurburgring to put the S60 round the Green Hell to improve the performance of both the road car and race cars, by pushing the road version as far as possible.

The result, admittedly not officially verified, was a time of 7m 51.11s, at the time a record for a four-door production saloon, although it has since been eclipsed by both the new Honda Civic Type R and the Alfa Quadrifoglio. Still, it’s something for bar room braggers to have in their arsenal of interesting nuggets.

Polestar said:

The objective was to take the performance of the Volvo S60 Polestar road car as far as possible.

The result was record-breaking and the learnings were so important, not only for the road car development but also for the race team that we had to keep it a secret for a full year.

Only now, just days before we return for the 2017 WTCC Race of Germany, can we reveal what really happened.

You can see the outing in the video below.

2017 Volvo S60 Polestar Photos

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2017 Volvo S60 Polestar Nurburging Record Video