The first winter with a driver's license is a rite of passage for car enthusiasts raised where it snows. When fresh powder falls, empty parking lots and abandoned industrial parks across the Snowbelt turn into perfect performance-driving training grounds. Breaking a car's tires loose on snow-slicked pavement is a great way to learn the fundamentals of car control at relatively safe, low speeds.followed a similar path to mastering driving dynamics.
I joined Rydholm on a frozen lake in Jokkmokk on a balmy near-freezing February day for several hours of fun lapping the 3 around handling tracks plowed atop three-foot-thick ice. "When we tune a chassis up here, everything goes in slow motion," says Rydholm, who rallies a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X at race-winning pace in his free time.
In most nose-heavy all-wheel-drive SUVs, you correct understeer by brushing the brake pedal. But the Polestar 3 isn't nose heavy. It has a roughly 50:50 weight distribution and that torque-vectoring axle and a rear motor that's more powerful than the front. When Polestar chassis engineer Per Jansson notices me dabbing the brakes to tighten my line mid-corner, he suggests I drive the 3 more like a rear-wheel-drive sports car: When it starts to push, squeeze the accelerator, he says.
You might think a frozen lake would be as smooth as a hockey rink, but even three-foot-thick ice heaves and cracks throughout the winter, and the circuits are groomed into a coarse corduroy. The result is a wavy and noisy surface that tests the suspension just as much as the steering and the studded winter tires.