Polestar has opened one of its largest dedicated retail sites in Europe in Leicester, converting a former Volvo dealership in the city centre, in a project delivered for the Volvo retailer Paul Rigby Group.
The site, completed this week, was designed by Jones Architecture and Design, whose Managing Director Wayne Jones described it on LinkedIn as “one of the largest dedicated Polestar facilities in Europe” and “the complete reinvention of an existing facility.”
Jones said the location was transformed from “a tired and outdated former Volvo dealership” into a Polestar Space with a new external identity and a glass-fronted showroom.
Pictures shared alongside the announcement show Polestar 2, 3, and 4 vehicles inside the showroom and several others parked in the outside lot.
From Spaces to Dealers
The opening is an instance of the retail model Polestar adopted after abandoning the company-owned Spaces it launched with.
From 2024 the brand moved to franchised partners to cut fixed costs, and in Britain those partners are largely Volvo retail groups converting Volvo estate. Paul Rigby Group, based in the West Midlands, is one of them.
The Leicester site therefore takes a Geely-group brand into a building another Geely-group brand vacated, in the same week Volvo Cars agreed to run Lynk & Co’s European sales through Volvo’s own retailers from January, as EV reported on Thursday.
Geely’s European brands are increasingly sharing retail estate as well as platforms.
Britain, by the Numbers
Polestar’s British registrations have turned down in the two months before the Leicester opening.
SMMT figures put August at 366 cars, down 50% from 729 a year earlier, after 568 in July, down 31% from 820.
The two months together are 934 against 1,549, a fall of 40%, after a first half in which Polestar grew 9% to 9,086 from 8,323, with January up 43% at 1,070, April up 25% at 1,076 and May up 11% at 1,305.
Year to date through August the brand is level, 10,020 against 9,872, up 1.5%, with September, the plate-change month that gave Polestar 2,758 registrations last year, the one that will decide the year.
The Market
Britain is one of Polestar’s larger markets and one where its lineup is complete: the China-built Polestar 2, the US-built Polestar 3 and the Korean-built Polestar 4, now joined by the Polestar 4 SUV launched on September 2 and, in the coming weeks, the first Polestar 5 deliveries.
Polestar reported a first-half retail record of 30,423 cars globally, up 0.4%, on September 3, with a net loss of $842 million and cash of $888 million, and cut its full-year volume guidance to low-to-mid single-digit growth.
Chief Executive Officer Michael Lohscheller has said the Polestar 4’s growing share of the mix is helping margins.
Polestar’s US retail is winding down under the Connected Vehicle Rule after model year 2026, which makes Europe, and Britain within it, the market the company’s partners are building for.
