11 used oddball Swedish cars that (mostly) cost less than a Polestar 4 SUV

This week saw the debut of the Polestar 4 SUV. As a fully electrified, crossover-shaped car, it feels wholly conventional against today’s trends. Yet there’s a pleasingly leftfield whiff about its creation; the wagon version of a rear window-less four-door coupe (still with us?), it’s perhaps not made its way to market in quite the same way as its dozens of likely rivals.

Which fits its ultimately Swedish creation. Polestar we know as a not-so-distant cousin of Volvo, who alongside a couple of other notable Scandi firms, has generously gifted automotive history with loveable curios. Like this 1963 Volvo Amazon Station Wagon, a clear ancestor to the new Polestar 4 whatever its badges say. It looks thoroughly handsome for its circa-£16,000 asking price, though beware the performance endowed by its modest 75bhp, 1.8-litre engine will somewhat lag its modern-day, dual-motor equivalent (with its 537bhp and sub-four-second haul from 0-62mph).

Or you could wind the clock back to the beginning of Polestar – at least in its modern, electrified guise. Volvo’s former, offbeat tuning arm matured into its own brand with this, the plug-in hybrid Polestar 1 coupe.

An undeniably clever, unexpectedly expensive attack on a world occupied by Porsche, Bentley and McLaren, it looked fantastic and drove well enough to live up to its impeccably chiselled looks. Around 1,500 were built across its brief three-year production run, but they’re all left-hand drive and you’ll do well to snap one up in the UK. Paying a tenner under £80,000 hardly befits our ‘bargain’ promise, but it’s a truly rare find for precious little over half its original asking price…

“What the merry flip is a Saab Sonnett?” A fair question, dear reader, whatever your level of automotive wisdom. A firm known mostly for its leftfield but still wholly sensible saloons, estates and cabriolets, Saab went off script with this cute little sports car.

Production first began with an adorable, doe-eyed roadster of which only six were made. A pair of wedgier coupes followed, this round-headlamped Sonnett II being the first to arrive. Power comes from a 1.5-litre V4 engine (wild!) with a heady 65bhp (mild!). Who cares about speed when your car’s this cute, though? Priced at a smidge over £25,000, you can’t currently buy a new coupe for less.

A similar V4 engine – albeit one tuned to deliver twice as much power – could be found in rally-prepped Saab 96 saloons. This one is described as “a faithful replica of the legendary green Saab 96 V4 driven by Per Eklund", aka WRC legend and winner of the 1976 Swedish Rally, and is a visual delight.

“The liveries, sponsor stickers, and markings were photographed, measured, and reproduced with the permission of the Saab Museum in Trollhättan, where Eklund's original car is housed,” the ad espouses. Which makes its sub-£14k asking price sound very fair indeed – not least because it’s fully equipped for historic rallying, something it’s done twice at Monte Carlo already. Feeling game?

Does a historic rally car feel a little too specialist for a run to the shops? Here’s one of Sweden’s more demure gems, a compact and thoroughly affordable Volvo hatchback from the mid Noughties.

Spun from the same platform as the more eminently sensible S40 saloon (not to mention the contemporary Ford Focus), it eschewed back doors and even a traditional boot, opting instead for a glass opening that prioritised stylish whimsy over the pragmatism of its siblings.

Cool things, not least in burbling five-cylinder form if you have the time and budget to hunt one down. This 142bhp 2.0-litre petrol at under £2k is the bigger bargain, though…

The C30 didn’t plummet into a bewildered Noughties hatchback market without context, though. It essentially resketched the formula of the classic Volvo 480, a car whose two-door, glass-hatch layout felt like a two-fingered salute to anyone who decried the Swede firm’s cars as too boxy. Flashing the 480’s pop-up lights at them is probably a kinder gesture, though.

This one claims a comprehensive history file alongside its modest mileage and low owner count. It’s a cool, kooky thing for under five grand – and a guaranteed showstopper if the attendees of your next cars ‘n’ coffee date possess even a modicum of taste.

Okay, the budget has climbed a little. But at, um, £2.5million, this Regera is the cheapest Koenigsegg we can currently find for sale. And that counts for something, right?

It’s certainly oddball, too. Each and every Koenigsegg has a bewildering engineering tale to tell, but the one belonging to the Regera is the most curious of all: it channelled the 1,479 horsepower of is hybrid powertrain through a single-speed transmission called ‘Direct Drive’, a smart solution for combining petrol and electric power for an overwhelming 20-second lunge at 250mph.

“If we can't find the right partner or solution for a problem we basically bring it in house,” Christian von Koenigsegg told TopGear.com at our blockbuster first drive. All you ultimately need to know is it can achieve a truly enormous burnout…

Back to the real world, though thankfully not with too dramatic a thump. The 900 is quintessential Saab; there’s a high chance any Millennials reading this grew up with these wedges slicing insouciantly around our childhood streets. There have been few four-seat cabriolets that have ever looked so effortlessly cool, that’s for sure, and its three-speed automatic ‘box should ensure you settle immediately into its calmer pace of life.

Pining for a manual? Its £5,795 asking price is essentially the baseline of you’ll pay for one now, with dozens costing much more in the classifieds, and this particular advert has its own offbeat charm. Just like the car itself.

Hardly an offbeat classic, you might argue. The Volvo 850 R’s story is very well known thanks to its bold British Touring Car Championship exploits. But a performance wagon that hauls around so much legend in its lengthy body is surely a bargain at under £10k.

Not least when it’s a Japanese import described as ‘rust-free’, words that usually pile several grand onto the cost of any Nineties icon. Its four-speed automatic gearbox may represent a chink in its appeal in lieu of the more desirable five-speed manual, yet its 2.3-litre five-cylinder turbo engine should subtly sing regardless.

The R badge didn’t live and die with the 850, either. Volvo recommissioned it in the early Noughties for its S60 saloon and V70 estate. And yes, this example comes with three pedals and a stick. Hurrah!

It called upon an uprated 2.5-litre T5 engine with a nice round 300bhp, though despite heady outputs, accomplished all-wheel drive and a set of natty blue dials, it couldn’t hold a candle to the contemporary BMW M3 or Audi S4. But it looks good now at just £8,750.

A few years late, perhaps, but Saab presented its own rival in 2007 in the shape of the 9-3 Turbo X. It launched 30 years after the Swedes’ pioneering 99 Turbo and was sold as both a saloon and wagon.

Essentially a cousin to the Vauxhall Insignia VXR – using the same 2.8-litre turbocharged V6, with 276bhp as standard and tuned up to 300bhp in this example – it paired Saab’s inimitable design language of the time with a trick ‘XWD’ four-wheel-drive system, albeit one that remained rather locked down in driving. Such maturity is all the better for making this a fabulously flexible all-rounder at a thoroughly tempting £4,500, however…