Isn’t it nice when concept cars we love turn into production cars you can buy. The original late-90s Audi TT was one example, but unfortunately all too rare. Rarer still are concept cars that started out with one badge on their bonnet and ended up with another for production. The 2008 Land Rover LRX concept which became the smash-hit 2011 Range Rover Evoque production car is the only recent one YesAuto can recall but now there’s another: the elegant Polestar 2 full-electric production car that actually started out as the Volvo 40.2 concept. Here’s how…
Volvo to Polestar: via a man named Thomas
Back in 2016, Volvo’s then design boss Thomas Ingenlath (above) unveiled two concept cars: a compact SUV called 40.1 which just two years later, almost unchanged, became the Volvo XC40 and the 40.2, an unusual saloon-style car (although actually a hatchback) with a stubby ‘notchback’ rear and raised-up frame. Ingenlath declared at the time: “We wouldn’t have shown this car unless we thought we could make it.” Given the concept’s name, the media thought it could herald a new Volvo V40 – we’re still waiting for that – but only a year later Polestar was born as Volvo’s upmarket sister brand with Ingenlath as CEO. Like a football manager changing teams, he took some of his people (and designs) with him and two years later in 2019, the Polestar 2 – the brand’s second production car and first full EV – was born with clear connections to the Volvo 40.2.
From the front: Volvo 40.2 vs. Polestar 2
Look at the two vehicles from the front and the links are obvious. Remove the Volvo roundel and diagonal line badging within the black grille area and replace it with a Polestar star logo on the end of the bonnet, tweak the bodywork around the lower front air intakes and then swap the slim camera wing mirrors for bigger conventional ones, and you’re pretty much set.
To the back: Volvo 40.2 vs. Polestar 2
It’s a similarly simple story of small changes at the rear. The Volvo 40.2’s inward-pointing bracket-style red rear lights remain – only joined up horizontally across the boot at the bottom of the Polestar 2. Key aspects like the large front-to-back tinted panoramic roof remain, whether body coloured or all-black, and very little else has significantly changed.
To the side: Volvo 40.2 vs. Polestar 2
Of course, fundamental to the continuity of any design is not the small details, but the overall proportions. Designers bang on about the importance of ‘proportions’ a lot, but it’s true. The comparative relation of one part to another with respect to magnitude, number, degree or ratio – to paraphrase one dictionary definition – is indeed key. And from the Volvo 40.2 (left) to the Polestar 2 (right) those proportions have little changed, as this side view of the two together makes clear. Concept to production completed with design integrity virtually intact then. In fact, better – as the Polestar 2 has a superbly modern and restrained interior not shown on the original concept. All in all, very refreshing and appropriate given Polestar boasts the car industry’s only designer CEO driving it forward.
Keyword: Concept to production: When a Volvo idea became Polestar reality