SD14 is gone. The fun didn’t even last a year. There were plans with this car. I have been investigating modifications for this car while trying to keep the appearance as stock as possible but some things weren’t that easy. The brakes for instance. Not much available which fits the Black 19″ Carbon Edition wheels. Suspension is possible. Exhaust systems for the V40 were virtually non existent. That was until Polestar introduced their line of parts. Expensive parts I must add but at least now there is an exhaust option.
The car itself turned out to be a blast. Very efficient driveline. Very fun car to drive. The brakes did OK also. There were a few things missing compared to the V60 Polestar the main thing being exhaust sound or any exhaust sound for that matter. With the Polestar V60 the exhaust sound changes when selecting the gearbox’s S-mode. This change invites you to use the S mode, for me mainly flipper mode, and with this mode the gearbox behaviour changes for the better. There is a lot less converter slip and a lot more manual gearbox feel. With the V40 the new 8-speed gearbox behaves a lot better in D-mode and although slightly faster in S-mode the shifting behaviour doesn’t change that much nor does the exhaust sound. Basically less reason to select the S-mode simply because in daily traffic the box is doing OK.
So.. While overthinking the options Volvo decided to drop the 6 cylinder from their engine program and replace it with a 2.0 4 cylinder. A very similar engine as used in the V40. A supercharger was added to up the low end torque and to fill the turbo spool void when using a larger turbo. Next Polestar had some saying in this which resulted in a car which appears to be the perfect mix of the 2016 Volvo V40 Carbon Edition and the 2015 Volvo V60 Polestar. The successor of the 2015 Polestar was born and is called the 2017 Polestar. It comes in the same shapes as it’s predecessor, the S60 and the V60. The way I looked at it I saw a V40 CE with big brakes, exhaust noise, over 100 HP of extra engine power and all wheel drive added as a bonus… The downside of all this is that the new model causes heavy depreciation of the already not so popular in my country predecessor. It wasn’t very attractive to trade the one and a half year old V60 Polestar. The idea of trading a less than a year old V40 wasn’t very attractive either but one can always ask and in this case it turned out to be a lot more attractive than expected. Beginning of May I sealed the deal trading the V40 “SD14” for a 2017 Volvo S60 Polestar. Because White it will be designated “SD15“. Last month the V40 has been transferred to it’s new owner and if all goes as planned the S60 will arrive by the end of this month.
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