Being careful to avoid national stereotypes is always good practice for a road tester. You know the sort: anthropomorphic nonsense about German cars being inherently efficient and resolute, Italian ones fiery and ostentatious or French ones inclined to the occasional spontaneous strike day.
But sometimes you’ve just got to share. So it was that, after a hosted dinner on the UK launch event of Polestar’s 3 and 4 electric crossovers, I had a highly enjoyable conversation with the company’s head of chassis development and de facto enthusiast driver-in-chief, Joakim Rydholm. And for the record, it was the high-spirited Swede who brought up meatballs.
Rydholm is supremely good company. His wide smile and sunny disposition are permanent fixtures, and simply by being so clearly excited and passionate about the cars he has worked on, he makes you more interested to drive them.
There probably isn’t a car manufacturer on the planet that wouldn’t experience a small but measurable uplift in the ratings given to them by car reviewers simply by having someone like him around to foster positivity.
Perhaps I entrapped Rydholm a bit by asking him to comment on a competitor’s product (I won’t tell you which, although you might just work it out).
What did he think of this new breakthrough performance EV? He paused, looked skywards as if weighing up whether to evade a comment – and then decided to twist.
“Did you ever order meatballs but get something you didn’t expect: those little tiny ones? They’re vegetarian in some cases, I think.
"In Sweden, our meatballs are big – and they’re almost always made from meat. That’s what that car reminds me of. I know it has had very positive reviews, but it’s a bit inauthentic; an EV pretending to be something else, some strange little non-meatball.
"Sure, we can make cars like this, playing up to existing preconceptions about what exciting driving feels like, but I prefer to get on with aiming at new modes and sensations; being progressive, breaking new ground.”
Indeed, Rydholm is all about sensations, not outright performance, body control and limpet-like grip for their own sake.
“The way we tune our cars is really focused on delivering a dynamic point of difference that you can feel,” he said.
“We focus our attention on accessible speed ranges, between 80 and 120kph [50 and 75mph]. We work the hardware and calibration for a perceptible advantage at those speeds.”
The mechanical torque-vectoring differential on the rear motor of the 3 is a fine example, he explained. This is the kind of technology that some manufacturers simply wouldn’t put on an EV, since it introduces mass and friction – but it also opens up tuning possibilities.
“I wanted a difference you could feel, so when you use the 3’s Performance driving setting, the clutches actually vector torque to the outside rear wheel, even at normal motorway speeds and even when you’re only adding a few steady degrees of steering angle,” explained Rydholm.
“So you can sweep around a fast curve in this car and it rotates as you accelerate; it feels like it’s almost steering itself.”
“EVs give us all of this transformative torque, but it’s how we use it that will allow us to take them to the next level for driver involvement,” he continued.
“Vectoring will be a big part of it. I have a Mitsubishi [Lancer] Evo X rally car with a competition handbrake that disengages the centre diff every time you pull it, so that it can lock the rear wheels more effectively.
"In that case, it’s just the sudden, controlled switch from positive to negative torque that has a dramatic effect on the car’s handling, but it shows the potential. I love driving it.”
