It's the end of an era. Since the 1990s, Polestar has worked alongside Volvo as an in-house tuner spicing up some of the Swedish automaker's sedate sedans and wagons into tire-shredding performance machines. Back in the summer, Polestar announced it was parting ways with Volvo, but now it's official. On Instagram, Polestar confirmed its breakup with Volvo in a rather blunt image that simply says "the end." Hardly a heartfelt goodbye message for a marriage that lasted over 20 years, is it?

Clearly, this is a bittersweet breakup, but this is by no means the end of Polestar. Under the leadership of former Volvo boss Thomas Ingenlath, the company is forging its own path to become a standalone brand focusing on high performance electric cars, effectively becoming Sweden's answer to AMG. Polestar started out in 1996 when it was then known as Flash Engineering helping Volvo develop touring cars to compete in the Swedish Touring Car Championship. The company was then renamed to Polestar in 2004 when it was taken over by Christian Dahl. This eventually led to a high-performance concept based on the Volvo C30 to see if there was any appetite for sportier Volvos.

Three years later, the first Polestar-tuned Volvos went on sale in the form of the S60 and V60 Polestar. They were so successful that Volvo bought Polestar to turn the company into an in-house tuner. Intriguingly, Volvo teased that a major announcement regarding the future of Polestar will be made in October when it first announced the two companies were parting ways. Chances are this is alluding to a concept previewing a forthcoming Polestar-badged performance car. Potentially, Polestar is about to become a force to be reckoned with – Audi, Mercedes and BMW might want to keep a close eye on the Swedish automaker.