It pleases me greatly when car manufacturers decide to stage their UK drive events in the North of England. Challenging roads, relatively traffic free, and no long drive down the M6 for me! I was therefore delighted to get the invite to drive the new Polestar 5 in Northumberland, a county I know well. An added bonus would be a night in the Bailiffgate Hotel, opposite Alnwick Castle.

The Polestar 5 is the Swedish manufacturer’s flagship model, and I suppose can accurately be described as a four-door GT, with the Porsche Taycan an obvious rival. The market is not the largest and Polestar, whilst hoping for volume sales, are realistic in their expectations. Jaguar’s much talked about Type O1 is also due to enter this class, so Polestar has some lofty company in this sector.

Initially, there will be two versions, the Dual Motor variant kicking things off. As the name implies, there’s an electric motor on each axle, with power a heady 737bhp. The Performance model I drove ups the ante to 871bhp. Whichever you choose, you will find the merest tickle of the accelerator enough to see other traffic reduced to a dot in the rear-view mirror.

On an empty bit of road, I tried a standing start. The on-paper performance says a 0-62mph sprint time of 3.8 seconds should be possible and I’m sure that is the case. I felt no need to repeat the exercise, with time needed for my internal organs to return to their usual place.

Performance without handling finesse is of little use, and at dinner I was lucky enough to sit next to Joakim Rydholm, the grandly titled Senior Chassis Development Engineer. He is rightly proud of the work that has gone into making the Polestar 5 a driver’s car.

Bespoke architecture has been used, and the Performance model has custom MagneRide adaptive dampers. As I was to find out, Joakim and his team’s hard work was not in vain.

As my driving companion and I eased slowly out of Alnwick, in search of some better roads in the Kielder area, dampers in Standard mode, immediately apparent was the cosseting ride, easily dealing with areas of broken tarmac. It would be easy to stick with the default damper setting, but once we upped the pace we tried out the firmer settings. With each change, the body movements felt more controlled, but on 60mph roads, any setting would suit quite well.

Pushing the car harder on familiar roads was a joy, the steering being fast and accurate, the brakes powerful and well weighted. It all felt very easy and all too quickly the speedometer would flash into licence-losing territory. Slower cars were easily picked off, and even when the roads turned damp later in the day, putting all that mighty power down was never an issue.

It’s hard to comment on the accuracy of Polestar’s figures for the range, as the car was being hustled along by two hard-charging journalists. I would suggest the quoted 346 miles for the Performance model is a little optimistic if using all the performance to the full. 280 + if driving with some restraint. The Dual Motor is rated at 421 miles, which will make it the better choice for the high-mileage driver.

Public charging will be brisk, and if you can find a 350kW unit, a 10 to 80% top up will take a tad over 20 minutes. Plug in empty on a 7kW home charger, an overnight charge will replenish though not fill the battery completely.

The Polestar 5 interior will be familiar to existing owners. A raft of high-quality materials are used, all lovely to touch. The Recaro seats up front are extremely comfortable and grip in all the right places. They are clad in fine Bridge of Weir leather too – a nice touch. In the back, two adults will find room aplenty to stretch out. Polestar describe the car as a ‘4+1’, the fold down armrest in the middle can be folded away if a fifth person needs to be carried.

They will get the short straw.

There’s no rear window, something we have seen before on Polestar 4, but the glass roof is one of the largest on any car so there’s plenty of natural light. My head was close to the roof, so those over six feet tall might be better accommodated up front. The boot is a decent size, with a 62-llitre frunk adding to the car’s carrying capacity.

As is now becoming the norm, a Google-based central touchscreen is needed to access most of the car’s functions. Wipers, exterior mirror adjustment, and much more all require some screen prodding. There are buttons on the steering wheel that work in conjunction. If this is to be your only car, fine, but on first acquaintance, there’s plenty to learn. My top-end BMW test car that week made things much easier with many proper buttons.

However, the minimalist look is what Polestar set out to achieve. Now, let’s get on to pricing. I accept that cars at this level of the market are likely to be leased or privately acquired on a PCP deal. The Dual-Motor starts from £89,500, whilst the Performance model ups this to £104,900. As driven, £117,700 with options of Matte paint (£4,300), 22-inch Performance Alloys (£3,200) and Charcoal extended leather (£5,300) bumping up the price. At the time of writing, a private customer deposit of £21,400 will see monthly payments from £799 (low APR of 1.9%).

I hope to be able to borrow the Dual Motor model for extended testing very soon. You lose a little performance and those rather excellent adjustable dampers, but with the extra range, I suspect this version will better suit the title of a performance GT, ideal for blasting across continents.

Stay tuned to find out.