The Polestar 4 arrived with an explanation from the company guy before I even hit the starter. There’s no rear windscreen – which is intentional, not an oversight.

Moving the rear roof support bar further back created so much additional cabin space for rear passengers that any windscreen would have been too small to be useful anyway. A camera mounted in the roof fin feeds a widescreen rear view mirror instead. It’s a logical solution. Whether it’s a satisfying one is a different question, and I’ll come back to it.

Inside, the minimalism is immediately apparent and entirely deliberate. Polestar is a Volvo spin-off, and the Scandinavian design philosophy runs through everything here – very dark, very clean, very uncluttered.

A massive landscape touch-screen dominates the centre, there’s a fully customisable display ahead of the driver, and a heads-up display for good measure. The LED interior lighting is all adjustable and themed around planets, because the car is called Polestar and someone in the design team clearly committed to this a bit too much.

An airy, spacious quality

Materials are good, seats are supportive, and the polarised panoramic glass roof – UV treated rather than fitted with a blind – gives the cabin an airy, spacious quality that is further enhanced by that repositioned rear bar. Rear legroom for tall adults is genuinely impressive.

The indicators deserve a mention, for the wrong reason. They make almost no noise – a faint click, barely audible – which sounds like a minor thing until you consider how easily you might leave one on without realising. It’s style over function in a way that will irritate some people considerably.

On the road, the Performance model moves. Rapidly. Acceleration is properly quick, handling is well composed, and the brakes are strong. Suspension arrives set to firm as standard, but it’s adjustable – dropping to the nimble setting improved things noticeably, and standard sits comfortably between the two as a daily option. Regenerative braking on standard setting is present but not aggressive; dropping to low makes it almost imperceptible, which personally I preferred.

Now, the rearview mirror. I wear glasses, and flicking my eyes up to a screen that close requires a brief refocus that a conventional mirror doesn’t – the focal distance is simply different. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s noticeable every time, and unlike the Land Rover Defender’s similar system which has both a conventional rear windscreen and a standard mirror option to fall back on, there’s no alternative. It’s the one element of the Polestar 4 that feels like a design decision made without fully considering the daily reality of living with it.

Drink holders are tucked away underneath the console rather than immediately obvious, which felt like another instance of aesthetics winning a narrow argument with practicality.

Understated rather than showy

But here’s the thing, despite those reservations, the Polestar 4 is genuinely impressive. It’s rapid, spacious, well-built, and handsome in a way that’s understated rather than showy.

It’s essentially a stylish, minimalist electric Volvo with serious performance credentials – a compelling combination. The rear camera situation aside, I’d happily spend more time in this one.

Toby Aiken is a copywriter and marketer with more than 18 years' experience writing for many different topics. A self-proclaimed petrol head, he loves all things automotive, and keeps an ever-changing five-car dream garage in his head at all times. While that line-up will always include at least one EV, he is a die-hard fan of a V8.