Jay Leno Just Did The Last Thing Anyone Expected In A 544-HP Electric SUV
Jay Leno has spent decades celebrating everything enthusiasts love about cars. Leno’s garage is filled with rumbling muscle cars, priceless classics, steam-powered oddities, motorcycles, race cars, and enough V8-powered machinery to make environmentalists break into a cold sweat. If there’s one person you’d expect to remain loyal to internal combustion, it’s Jay Leno.
That’s exactly why the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage is so surprising.
Jay Leno Takes An EV Off-Road
Instead of sliding around in an old Subaru WRX STI, Ford Raptor, or vintage rally machine, Leno spent the day thrashing an electric Polestar 4 Arctic Circle prototype down dusty California backroads. Even stranger, he seemed to enjoy every minute of it. Watching one of the world’s biggest gasoline enthusiasts smiling while pitching a silent EV sideways through loose dirt feels almost surreal, but Polestar clearly came prepared to change a few minds.
Although it starts life as a Polestar 4 Performance, the Arctic Circle edition is far removed from the luxury electric crossover that customers can actually buy. The Swedish automaker created it as a rolling engineering exercise inspired by Scandinavian rally driving, building a machine capable of tackling frozen lakes, snow-covered forests, and rough gravel roads rather than shopping mall parking lots.
Power comes from the production dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain, producing 544 horsepower and enough instant torque to rocket from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds. However, straight-line speed was never the primary goal. According to Joakim Rydholm, Polestar’s Head of Driving Performance, nearly every modification was made to improve how the vehicle behaves when grip is at a premium, whether that’s on snow, ice, or loose dirt.
To achieve that, the team fitted fully adjustable Öhlins rally dampers, raised the suspension by 20 mm, developed bespoke 20-inch OZ Racing wheels, upgraded the brakes with Brembo hardware, installed Recaro seats, mounted auxiliary rally lights, and even added a ski rack for good measure. It’s a collection of modifications you’d normally expect to find on a World Rally Championship service truck, not on an electric luxury crossover.
Perhaps the coolest feature is the custom hydraulic handbrake. Since electric all-wheel-drive systems don’t naturally behave like traditional rally cars, Polestar had to engineer a system that disconnects the rear electric motor before the hydraulic brake engages. The result is a car that can rotate into corners on command, allowing drivers to initiate proper rally-style slides instead of simply relying on electronic stability systems. Rydholm admitted that making the system feel natural required weeks of development work.
Jay Leno Might Have Just Found One Of The Most Entertaining EVs Yet
Throughout the episode, Leno repeatedly admits how planted and confidence-inspiring the Polestar feels, especially once Rydholm encourages him to stop being cautious and simply “floor it.” As the pair powers through dirt roads outside Los Angeles, it’s obvious that this isn’t just another fast electric vehicle chasing acceleration records. The entire project revolves around driver engagement, something critics often argue modern EVs struggle to deliver.
Rydholm explained that Polestar spent thousands of hours testing on frozen lakes in northern Sweden, carefully calibrating torque delivery using steering angle, throttle input, and yaw sensors to create predictable, controllable slides. Instant electric torque gives engineers an incredible amount of precision when distributing power between the front and rear axles, allowing the vehicle to remain stable while still feeling playful. In fact, Rydholm even claimed electric cars are already faster than combustion-powered cars on ice, although the lack of dedicated electric rally championships means there’s currently nowhere to truly prove it in competition.
The irony of the whole video is impossible to ignore. For years, enthusiasts have joked that electric SUVs are little more than oversized appliances designed to shuttle families between charging stations. Yet here’s Jay Leno—arguably one of the biggest ambassadors for gasoline-powered performance cars—laughing his way through dirt roads in complete silence, throwing rooster tails of dust instead of exhaust smoke.
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