The 270 kW engine in the new Volvo S60 and V60 Polestar, one of the most powerful four-cylinder production engines in the world, has been awarded the prestigious 2017 Wards 10 Best Engines trophy.
“Not long ago, a newly designed engine that could achieve 100 horsepower per litre was a big deal. Today, Polestar and Volvo blow way past that mark, achieving a remarkable 184 horsepower (135 kW) per litre from the 2.0-litre 4-cylinder Drive-E engine in the S60 and V60 Polestar. It’s a threshold never before seen in our competition,” wrote the editors of WardsAuto in their jury report.
In winning the award, the S60/V60 Polestar engine faced off against 40 other nominated engines and models, including the BMW M2, Jaguar XE and Porsche 718 Cayman.
“We set out to increase performance and drivability, at the same time lowering consumption as well as emissions with our new engine,” says Niels Möller, Chief Operating Officer at Polestar.
“With the strong efforts of our development team in combination with the cutting-edge technology of the Volvo Cars Drive-E engine family, we achieved what we set out to do. This engine is the culmination of the development work that we started in 2009 with the powertrain optimisation programme and we are proud to receive this recognition from WardsAuto as a testament to our philosophy.”
The Volvo S60 and V60 Polestar, sharing engine technology with the S60 Polestar WTCC race car in which Thed Björk recently won at Shanghai International Raceway, are available in 47 markets around the globe. In South Africa, the S60 Polestar with its upgraded Drive-E powertrain, was imported for 2016 in a limited run of just 45 units.
