Volvo V40 will get Polestar tuning

While the full powertrain line-up for the new model - which will go on sale next year in Europe - isn't confirmed yet, Polestar is already working on tweaking an engine for it.

The Swedish performance specialists - who are Volvo's motorsport partner in the World Touring Car Championship - are using the T5 2.5-litre four-cylinder from the C30 and C70.

While the engine will also sit in the line-up as a standard unit with 169kW of power and 320Nm of torque, in Polestar's hands those outputs will be upped to 184kW and 370Nm, similar to the tuned version of the C30 T5.

However other characteristics will be changed for the new car, which is built on an extended version of the C30 platform.

"Even if it's the same engine, we want to adapt the 'personality' to the car," Polestar marketing manager Hans Baath says. "We will probably not change the numbers, but there is a huge difference we can make in characteristics . how it drives, whether the torque comes in earlier and how steep it is. There are so many variables - it's about throttle response, it's about how you get the transmission to work in. It's about how it will feel for the driver."

The car was sitting under wraps in a corner of Polestar's Gothenburg headquarters when we visited last week, but the silhouette confirms that under the camouflage of recent spy shots is a fast-angled five-door hatch that has been built on an extended version of the C30 platform.

The new model will be unveiled the Geneva motor show in March - along with  a new treatment of the Volvo naming convention, with V40 likely to turn out to be just an internal working title. It will go on sale in Europe next year, eventually edging out the S40 and V50 in the mid-sized segment.

Volvo Australia has confirmed that the car will be here within 15 months, and will be strategically priced to win buyers from German and top-level Japanese brands, possibly starting around $40,000 for the base model.

While managing director Matt Braid says it's too early to determine Australian spec or price, he suggests that "ideally we'll have a couple of petrols and potentially a couple of diesels".

If the local line-up follows the pattern of the C30, we'll get the T5 - and the Polestar version too, if we're lucky.