The most insane touring car of the 90s #BlogPost

First i’d like to start out by saying that I had this article on DRIVETRIBE but since I got absolutely no attention on it at all, you lot can enjoy it.

The year was 1992 and Swedish auto-maker Volvo had just signed a 3-year contract with British racing team TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) to build a car for the British Touring Car Championships. The car that they chose for the base of their race car was the Volvo 850 Estate. This is something that hasn’t been saw in the BTCC before. This was kept a secret until the very last moment, even the drivers, Rickard Rydell, and Jan Lammers had no idea that this would be the car that they would be racing.

Volvo had guts making the decision to use the estate over the sedan, a decision that would be one of Volvo’s boldest choices ever! They wanted to get attention, and by using the estate that spent most of its time on two wheels, that wasn’t hard to accomplish!

These TWR Volvo’s had 2.0-Litre Inline 5’s that had 290HP coupled to 6-Speed sequential transmissions. Thanks to these transmissions, the engine could be mounted further back, and lower to give the car better weight-distribution. The cars were stripped out to attempt to reach the 950KG regulation base weight, thus leaving the car with an empty, gargantuan interior compared to the other BTCC cars.

Aesthetically, the TWR 850 kept the dull, pedestrian shape of the normal car, but paired with the 19-Inch O.Z wheels, racing livery, and the low stance led to the car looking absolutely menacing! The estate body-style was more aerodynamic than the saloon. This car is one of my absolute favorites by far!

It may not have been that successful, only coming in third in 1995 and 1996 with Rydell behind the wheel, but out of all the cars from that decade of BTCC, this Volvo is the one that people remember most! I hope you enjoyed this article. As always, have a good one!