Believe it or not, they think these should be road-legal.
Somewhere in an industrial estate in Sweden, there are a group of people who are either absolutely insane or entirely gifted, who work on cars that come from a company that not 10-years ago wouldn’t have at all been associated with anything remotely fun. Lynk & Co, the mass-market new-mobility offshoot from Volvo’s parent company, have teamed up with Cyan Racing (née Polestar) to create the 03 Cyan Concept which they claim is a race car for the road.
If you think that it looks a lot like the 03 TCR racer that Cyan intends to compete with in the 2019 FIA World Touring Car Cup in, you’d be quite right. That’s because Lynk and Cyan see the 03 Cyan Concept as a platform to bring racing innovations to the road, hence the familiarity.
“While this concept might be a bit extreme, we have learned that in order to explore the true characteristics of a car, you need to push it to its maximum and that is just what we are doing right now with this car. We strive to find the optimal balance between responsiveness and performance in combination with predictable, balanced, and safe behaviour. That is the same base philosophy as when we develop race cars.” – Thed Björk, Development Driver, Cyan Racing
We’re still debating about whether to call Lynk & Cyan’s engineers insane or gifted because somehow, despite a meagre 2.0-litre capacity, they’ve managed to squeeze no less than 394kW (or 528hp) from the four-cylinder, with power going to just the front wheels via a 6-speed sequential gearbox. Bear in mind that at its core, that’s a Volvo engine. Like the one in your XC90.
Of course, Cyan’s capabilities with Volvo engines is long established. They’re the same team behind the 1.6-litre Volvo mill that won the 2017 World Championship, and the award-winning V8 mill that continues to serve the team’s V8 Supercars programme. Just how they intend to spin the innovations seen on the 03 Cyan Concept into production cars remains to be seen, but the car you see here will now join the Cyan Racing team for pre-season testing, at the “most legendary circuit in the world.”
We can’t wait to see a Nürburgring lap time.
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