Blue Moon Volvo C30 -original post date 4/22/2013
The
first picture is obviously not a car, but it was the inspiration behind
why I chose the car that I did for today. The first photo is ice
cream. Not just any ice cream, but that most mysterious flavor one can
search out in the upper Midwest known as
“Blue Moon“. Nobody who knows what flavors go into this ice cream will
say, and between companies that make Blue Moon, there’s probably plenty
of variation anyway. For those of you who have not tried Blue Moon ice
cream, I’ll try to describe the taste. To my somewhat unsophisticated
palate, Blue Moon tastes like a mixture of amaretto, possibly lime or
pineapple sherbet, and perhaps some pistachio flavoring. Those of you
who have ever sampled “Superman” ice cream may recognize Blue Moon as
the blue component of the yellow, red and blue concoction. But what
does this have to do with cars?
It turns out that Blue Moon ice cream shares its Smurfy hue with a car that I’ve lusted after ever since seeing the prototype a couple years back, the Volvo C30 Polestar Limited Edition hatchback offered in a distinct shade called “Rebel Blue“. The one featured in the 2nd and 3rd photos is the now available production version of the prototype, which is considerably less impressive, but a pretty neat car none the less.
Polestar is a company that is officially partnered with Volvo, and their goal is to enhance performance by tuning up the vehicles they take on. Polestar the name speaks of a visible star up in the sky situated near the earth’s celestial pole, and thus its axis of rotation. It’s usually referred to as Polaris, but of course, that company name is already taken (in fact, Polaris now owns Indian Motorcycles, and makes some very gorgeous bikes -one of which my nephew Lucian was awed by when I took him to the Moto show earlier this year -the picture is somewhere in my photo archive).
The prototype Polestar Volvo C30 that I fell in love with back in 2011 looked very much the same as the one pictured here. It started out with the same 2.5L 5 cylinder engine that a base C30 has, but it was turbocharged, tuned and tweeked to produce 405HP and 376 lb ft of torque. That’s an insane amount of power for a car this small. It was fitted with Brembo brakes, a six speed transmission, and a Haldex all wheel drive system (Haldex is a Swedish company that specializes in AWD systems). In other words, it was a swift little hot hatch rally car that could smoke just about anything in its path. I wanted to get behind the wheel of that car so bad, I could almost taste it… like Blue Moon ice cream.
Alas, the stuff I liked best about the Polestar C30 prototype was set aside for the production Polestar tuned Volvo. Gone is the Haldex AWD system in favor of the regular front wheel drive set up. The six speed transmission stayed, but the turbocharged engine was only calibrated to push out 250HP and 273 lb ft of torque, which is still 23 more horses and 37 lb ft of torque more than the non-Polestar C30, but considerably less potent than the prototype. The “Rebel Blue” paint stayed though.
I want to love the C30 because it carries on styling cues from a long gone Volvo of the 1960’s called the P1800ES, which was a wagon version of the P1800 coupe. If you don’t know what these cars look like, you should Google them, because they’re pretty nice looking vehicles. The C30 even has the entirely glass hatch lid just like the P1800ES. The ancestral Volvo certainly didn’t pack the kind of power that the prototype or even the regular spec C30 offers, and there was no AWD, either, but I still think these cars should have AWD as an option. If only they did, I’d be plotting and scheming to get one in my garage instead of setting my sights on the Focus ST that gave me a case of the giggles a few weeks back (no, the Focus doesn’t have AWD, but it was a blast to drive, has 2 more horseys than the Polestar, and totally loaded up, is still thousands cheaper).
The C30 is supposed to compete against the likes of the Mini. It needs to offer something beyond different styling that the Mini doesn’t, and I think AWD would be just the ticket to ramp up those sales. Who wouldn’t want to cruise around battering Minis in their very own tiny little rally car? Sales of the C30 are less than impressive compared to its rivals. The base price of a C30 is around $25,500, with the sportier R-design models clocking in at $27,850 on up, and the Polestar featured here wears a sticker price of $34,895. That’s a lot to pay for a compact car, and part of why sales aren’t going so well may be that people just don’t feel like they’re getting enough of a show for their money, so sales slump. The upswing is that as time passes, the C30 will be more rare and thus, more sought after by people looking to stock a collection with interesting little cars. In the meantime though, it’s still a decent machine, it’s just that it may be headed the way of the dinosaurs if it doesn’t find its niche.
The C30 Polestar is an unusual little car that’s not too popular, and it doesn’t seem to have a defined goal in mind for who should buy it and why. It’s like Blue Moon ice cream in that way. You don’t see it around all that often, it’s a bit strange, and you’re not quite sure what it is or why you like it… but it’s good.
It turns out that Blue Moon ice cream shares its Smurfy hue with a car that I’ve lusted after ever since seeing the prototype a couple years back, the Volvo C30 Polestar Limited Edition hatchback offered in a distinct shade called “Rebel Blue“. The one featured in the 2nd and 3rd photos is the now available production version of the prototype, which is considerably less impressive, but a pretty neat car none the less.
Polestar is a company that is officially partnered with Volvo, and their goal is to enhance performance by tuning up the vehicles they take on. Polestar the name speaks of a visible star up in the sky situated near the earth’s celestial pole, and thus its axis of rotation. It’s usually referred to as Polaris, but of course, that company name is already taken (in fact, Polaris now owns Indian Motorcycles, and makes some very gorgeous bikes -one of which my nephew Lucian was awed by when I took him to the Moto show earlier this year -the picture is somewhere in my photo archive).
The prototype Polestar Volvo C30 that I fell in love with back in 2011 looked very much the same as the one pictured here. It started out with the same 2.5L 5 cylinder engine that a base C30 has, but it was turbocharged, tuned and tweeked to produce 405HP and 376 lb ft of torque. That’s an insane amount of power for a car this small. It was fitted with Brembo brakes, a six speed transmission, and a Haldex all wheel drive system (Haldex is a Swedish company that specializes in AWD systems). In other words, it was a swift little hot hatch rally car that could smoke just about anything in its path. I wanted to get behind the wheel of that car so bad, I could almost taste it… like Blue Moon ice cream.
Alas, the stuff I liked best about the Polestar C30 prototype was set aside for the production Polestar tuned Volvo. Gone is the Haldex AWD system in favor of the regular front wheel drive set up. The six speed transmission stayed, but the turbocharged engine was only calibrated to push out 250HP and 273 lb ft of torque, which is still 23 more horses and 37 lb ft of torque more than the non-Polestar C30, but considerably less potent than the prototype. The “Rebel Blue” paint stayed though.
I want to love the C30 because it carries on styling cues from a long gone Volvo of the 1960’s called the P1800ES, which was a wagon version of the P1800 coupe. If you don’t know what these cars look like, you should Google them, because they’re pretty nice looking vehicles. The C30 even has the entirely glass hatch lid just like the P1800ES. The ancestral Volvo certainly didn’t pack the kind of power that the prototype or even the regular spec C30 offers, and there was no AWD, either, but I still think these cars should have AWD as an option. If only they did, I’d be plotting and scheming to get one in my garage instead of setting my sights on the Focus ST that gave me a case of the giggles a few weeks back (no, the Focus doesn’t have AWD, but it was a blast to drive, has 2 more horseys than the Polestar, and totally loaded up, is still thousands cheaper).
The C30 is supposed to compete against the likes of the Mini. It needs to offer something beyond different styling that the Mini doesn’t, and I think AWD would be just the ticket to ramp up those sales. Who wouldn’t want to cruise around battering Minis in their very own tiny little rally car? Sales of the C30 are less than impressive compared to its rivals. The base price of a C30 is around $25,500, with the sportier R-design models clocking in at $27,850 on up, and the Polestar featured here wears a sticker price of $34,895. That’s a lot to pay for a compact car, and part of why sales aren’t going so well may be that people just don’t feel like they’re getting enough of a show for their money, so sales slump. The upswing is that as time passes, the C30 will be more rare and thus, more sought after by people looking to stock a collection with interesting little cars. In the meantime though, it’s still a decent machine, it’s just that it may be headed the way of the dinosaurs if it doesn’t find its niche.
The C30 Polestar is an unusual little car that’s not too popular, and it doesn’t seem to have a defined goal in mind for who should buy it and why. It’s like Blue Moon ice cream in that way. You don’t see it around all that often, it’s a bit strange, and you’re not quite sure what it is or why you like it… but it’s good.
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