Geely Keeps Volvo ICE Power Roaring
It’s with some irony that Volvo’s parent company’s racing arm, Cyan Racing, continues to fly the sporting ICE banner for the Swedish carmaker by breaking records at the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany
While Geely has been behind Volvo’s move to push its erstwhile Polestar sub-brand into exclusively developing BEV powertrains, Cyan Racing, which rose from the electric static left by Polestar, has pumped up the power the special to crack lap records for both fastest front-wheel drive car and fastest four-door car round the tortuous 12.944 mile road circuit. The design team were previously behind the previous concept cars of Cyan Racing, the 447bhp Volvo C30 Concept and the 505bhp Volvo S60 Concept.
The car in question, the Lynk & Co 03 Cyan Concept, set a lap of 7:15.123 on the ‘short’ 12.8 mile circuit, driven by Thed Björk, the 2017 World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) winner. This is 25 seconds faster than the former record holder, the Renault Mégane RS Trophy R, which set a 7:40.1 earlier this year prior to its launch, and three seconds faster than Jaguar’s most recent effort with the XE SV Project 8. On the slightly longer 12.944 mile track, the car set a 7:20.143.
However, both of these were in production car guise, whereas the Cyan Concept is, as you’d guess from the name, a concept car. While heavily modified, the powertrain in the car is based on a Volvo engine, although Cyan Racing has declined to mention which one. The 03 Cyan sends all of its 521bhp from the turbocharged 2-liter inline-four to the front wheels, with a sequential gearbox and limited-slip differential to make the most of the power. The concept was built by Lynk & Co, a Canadian company backed by Geely which is competing in the World Touring Car Cup, then converted to race spec by Cyan Racing.
Henrik Fries, research and development head at Cyan Racing, hinted there may be a road-going offshoot to the concept, saying: “The Lynk & Co 03 Cyan Concept acts as a development platform for future Lynk & Co performance cars and parts.”
