Great news for fans of model cars - Polestar has brought its 2022 Design Contest winner to life as a 1:1 scale model, all while announcing a partnership with Mattel, the company behind the hugely successful Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy-car brands.
Striking and sustainable
The Polestar Synergy electric fantasy supercar you can see here, which was revealed at the IAA show in Munich, combines three winning designs from last year's competition, which invited a field of more than 600 entries. The idea was to create a Polestar vehicle that was focused on the performance-driving experience, although the ecological twist on it - as befitting a company that only makes electric vehicles - was that the car had to be both technical and sustainable.
From a shortlist of ten designs, the judges then couldn't split two exterior drawings and one interior vision, and it is these three that have been combined over the past six months to create the full-sized Synergy model seen in Munich. Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar's CEO, said: "Congratulations to the winners; their vision and the teamwork with our designers has resulted in a truly gorgeous car."
The Synergy is a single-seat vehicle with global design influences, with the exterior designers Devashish Deshmukh and Swapnil Desai based in Paris, while the interior was the brainchild of China-based Yingxiang Li. Inspiration for all three came from various sources, such as hollowed-out volumes drawn from hammerhead sharks, the use of construction materials that are designed to age gracefully over time, and an interior focused on 'floating comfort and control'. The resulting car measures 4.56 metres long but just 1.07 metres tall, which gives it a dramatic silhouette that, Polestar says, proves electric supercars can be just as exciting as those powered by internal combustion.
Maximillian Missoni, Polestar's head of design, added: "This year, the story is as much about collaboration as performance. I'm proud that the team were able to guide and support the winners to realising their dream as a full-scale model. It's not often student designers receive such exposure at the start of their career, something the Polestar Design Community on Instagram does so well, amplified this year by the 1:1 scale model and its planned tour of Polestar locations around the world."
Yes, after its debut in Munich, the Polestar Synergy will be shipped over to the US and will begin a tour of various Polestar spaces in the country as part of the other exciting model news coming out of Munich from Polestar...
Partnership with Mattel's Hot Wheels
Anyone who's into model cars can't fail to have heard of Hot Wheels, so perhaps the most exciting announcement is that the next Polestar Design Contest will reference the 'innovative and outrageous' Hot Wheels designs that have issued forth from the American company across its 55-year history. Even better, the partnership between the carmaker and toy giant will result in various Polestar production vehicles appearing as Hot Wheels and Matchbox models in the years to come.
Roberto Stanichi, senior vice-president and global head of vehicles at Mattel, said: "Just as Polestar is redefining the boundaries of electric performance and automotive innovation, Hot Wheels has consistently pushed the limits of imagination and design, and we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Polestar starting with this year's Design Contest winner. This collaboration celebrates the essence of Hot Wheels: hard-fought determination, grit and passion that pushes the boundaries of auto design. We can't wait to see the concepts for next year's challenge."
Polestar's CEO Mr Ingenlath added: "The collaboration with Mattel for next year's Polestar Design Contest and the forthcoming scale models of our production cars will bring the Polestar brand and this groundbreaking competition to an even wider audience. All of this proves that electric vehicles - in reality or as toys - can be just as, if not more, exciting than their ICE equivalents."
Full details of the 2023 Polestar Design Contest will be announced in due course, but for now, one last word to the 2022 entrants - aside from the three designers whose ideas were merged to create the Synergy model, Poland's Kamil Kozik was highly commended too for his sustainability-focused performance go-kart. It featured a pared-back structure and had the capability to become part of a local power grid when it wasn't in use. You can see it sitting alongside the Synergy in a few of the pictures released by Polestar.