The beast is back! Polestar performance brand BST under consideration for Australia

Polestar’s high performance BST brand is back on the agenda for Australia.

The new CEO of Polestar Australia Scott Maynard is unequivocal in his positive attitude toward BST – the acronym being a contraction of Beast – which can be thought of as the Sino-Swedish electric-only brand’s equivalent of Mercedes-AMG or BMW M.

“Personally I love it,” he said, while cautioning there were no “solid plans to bring it to Australia yet”.

“I am a performance car guy,” Maynard added. “It would be great to see what could be made ADR compliant and available to the Australian market.”

That’s great news for Polestar fans disappointed that Australia missed out on the two Polestar 2-based BST models that have previously been rolled out – the BST 270 in 2022 and the BST 230 in 2023 (the numbers refer to how many were built).

And while the ageing Polestar 2 seems unlikely to ever be sold as a BST in Australia, the incoming Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 SUVs are both expected to have BST variants that could come to Australia.

Polestar has also shown a concept version of the 2026 Polestar 6 sports car as a BST model, which presumably means the 2025 Polestar 5 GT sedan must be a chance for BST boosting as well.

The bad news is Maynard and his team have a lot on their plate at the moment with the back-to-back launch of 3 and 4 and a restructure of the local retail network underway.

So BST will take a little while to show up here.

“I am pro BST,” Maynard said. “I love what the brand has done with that product.

“We just have to make sure it can be brought to market Australian Design Rule compliant.

“We need to make sure the Polestar brand is really well established before we start having those other bits and pieces that go with it that enhance it in other markets and make sure they are relevant for Australia.”

Previously, with BST seemingly out of reach, Polestar Australia had investigated a locally tuned version of the Polestar 2.

But both that and a BST 2 now appear to be off the agenda.

“I think if we were going to go BST on performance – can’t rule out something on 2 – but we would probably focus on the newer cars,” Maynard said.

“We’d do it [performance tuning] locally if it can be absolutely factory endorsed and matched up with Sweden's engineers and be perfectly compatible and backed by warranty and integrated into what we do now.”

The dual motor Polestar 2 BST 270 and 230 churned out 350kW and 680Nm and came with specially developed Ohlins two-way adjustable dampers that could be tweaked by owners with manual adjustments under the frunk.

A Polestar 3 with BST boost applied would literally be one heck of a beast, as the existing dual motor version with Performance Pack already makes 380kW/910Nm and accelerates from 0-100km/h in 4.7 seconds.

The smaller and lighter Polestar 4 with PP is even more impressive, making 400kW/686Nm and reaching 100km/h from rest in 3.8 seconds.

Watch this space.