No rear window and a Taycan in its sights: Mat Watson drives the Polestar 5
Viewers turned the comments into a lesson on speedometers and a plea for parking garage tests, because the Swedish grand tourer is very wide.
carwow
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 717,312 views a day, 8.9 times a normal first day on this channel (80,632).
NEW 850hp Polestar 5 proves you DON’T NEED a PORSCHE!
"NEW 850hp Polestar 5 proves you DON'T NEED a PORSCHE!" is Mat Watson's full review of Polestar's big electric grand tourer, a car aimed squarely at the Porsche Taycan and the Audi e-tron GT. It drew close to 700,000 views in its first 22 hours. A new carwow review usually opens with around 80,000, and the channel as a whole has been running a little below its usual daily pace.
The shape will look familiar to anyone who remembers the Precept, the long, low concept Polestar showed in 2020. The production car keeps that concept's boldest idea: there is no rear window at all, and the rear-view mirror shows a camera feed instead. The title rounds the power to 850hp. The description lists 748hp for the entry car and 884hp for the Performance version Mat tests, with prices starting at £89,000 and his fully optioned car coming to £117,000.
The review follows the familiar carwow pattern: a launch test, a brake test, then five annoying features and five cool ones. The launch test started a discussion of its own. Mat's timing gear and the car's own readout did not quite agree, and several viewers explain that speedometers tend to read slightly high, so the car stops its clock just before a true 60mph.
Others keep coming back to the car's size. One owner of a large electric SUV says the Polestar is wider still, and more than one viewer asks for a multistory parking garage test on future reviews. The rear middle seat gets its own jokes, and a fair few people are simply glad to see a low, sleek saloon instead of another crossover.
Carwow has two crowds going at once: last weekend's drag race of every V12 Lamborghini, as we reported here, has now passed 1.6 million views.
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What viewers say
Rear middle seat looks like an ejecto seat
@richieduck67See it on YouTubefirst one that isn't a crossover blob.
@Missing_chapters001See it on YouTubeThe car's speedo will overread by about 3mph, so it stops timing when it thinks it's doing 60mph but it's really only doing 57, whereas Mat's specialist timing gear stops at a true 60mph which comes a fraction of a second later.
@AndronkSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- carwow
- Subscribers
- 11,100,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 24,311,391
- Channel views, pace per day
- 2,982,395 (on a normal day: 3,355,933)
- Video published
- October 6, 2026
- Video views so far
- 692,483 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 717,312
The numbers
The review's first day ran far ahead of a usual carwow start, while the channel's overall daily views stayed close to normal.
💡 Test your knowledge
Polestar, like its sister brand Volvo Cars, is based in which Swedish city?
Both Volvo Cars and Polestar have their headquarters in Gothenburg, on Sweden's west coast.
