Premiere for concept car from Volvo Cars' official Racing and Performance Partner



This weekend Volvo Cars and Polestar enter their fifteenth consecutive motorsport season in the Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) as reigning champions. But even before the racing cars exit the pit for the weekends' first practice session, Polestar now present the ultimate Volvo car for the street.

Main objective with the Volvo C30 Polestar Performance Concept Prototype is to explore what happens when racing engineers and designers get free hands to build a street car without any limitations set by a specific racing regulation.

Polestar has a long and successful competition history with Volvo, racing with 850, S40, and S60. In 2009, Polestar won the STCC for Volvo Cars with the C30, a car they developed completely from scratch.

The close relationship between Polestar and Volvo Cars in testing and development has lead up to Polestar receiving the responsibility to develop Polestar Performance Engine Optimization Products as a complement to Volvos standard cars.

These products are sold through Volvos dealers on several markets and are the only engine optimizations for Volvo cars covered by Volvos original warranty and where the certified fuel consumption and emissions remain unchanged.

With the Volvo C30 Polestar Concept Prototype, Polestar aimed to build further on the strong driving characteristics of the standard C30 and at the same time illustrate the link between the racing cars and the Polestar Performance products.

The car is based on Polestars unique experience from developing the Volvo C30 into a winning race car. The interior and exterior design reflects Polestars know-how on the C30's aerodynamic and driving properties derived through several years of development and testing - from computer simulations, to wind tunnel and race track testing.

The car will premiere at Gothenburg Motor show April 22-25.


Polestar C30 Performance Prototype Technical Specification
Engine: Volvo T5: 2.5L Turbo with larger intercooler and KKK 26 turbo
Modified pistons, conrods and inlet camshaft
Power Output: 405 hp. Torque: 510 Nm
Drivetrain: Quaife mechanical differential brake front and rear
Haldex AWD
Chassis: Öhlins shock absorbers and springs
More responsive steering rack with 2,25 ratio
Brakes:
Front: Brembo 380mm discs with six piston calipers
Rear: Brembo 330mm discs with four piston calipers
Rims and Tires:
BBS FI 19x8,75”
Pirelli P Zero 235/35 ZR 19
Interior: Racing seats with Ternsjö leather and four point harness
Exterior: Aerodynamics derived from the STCC race car



For more information, please log on to www.polestar.se or contact Hans Bååth, Polestar Performance Marketing Director +46-(0)708-920627

With the introduction of the new Volvo S60 it became clear that the looks of this model suggest a very sportive car.
Soon after Volvo started the questionable Naughty Volvo campaign.
Questionable in a way that the first video's published didn't make sense or totally missed their point. The only thing the campaign did was to create confusion.
Maybe the point was to create confusion?

Soon after the Naughty Volvo campaign the confusion became even greater when word came out that Vincent Radermecker and Eric van de Poele were going to run a New S60 "silhouette" is the Belgian Touring Car Series long before the new S60 will reach the market.



Shortly before the pictures of the real S60 racer where posted on the internet some drawings were posted of a possible Volvo S60 touringcar,



But at that time it wasn't really clear that the car was to be used in a so called silhouette class so many of so called "R clientele" became all warm and fuzzy..
Did this imply that Volvo is going to re-introduce a real R? Does it mean that all those worldwide R clients, who were bluntly left out in the cold, can go shop for a new R soon?

To add even more fuel to the fire a blurry image of a not so standard new Volvo S60 appeared shortly before the introduction at the Geneva motorshow,



At that point many of the "former" P2 R owners and soon to be ex Volvo clients became even more worked up over a possible real R successor.

Imagine the deception when Volvo introduced the new S60. It turned out Volvo will offer the S60T6 AWD with a Geartronic transmission only. In the last couple of years it has become obvious that the Geartronic has had it's best time. It is a last century transmission. It is slow and has a life of it's own. In certain circumstances it doesn't even shift smooth and when handled in a sportive way it gives up and starts running behind the facts after the first three corners.
Even when Volvo wants the people to believe that they squeezed some extra life out of this gearbox it is obvious that even a 50 percent improvement over the old and know "Captain Slow" Geartronic still isn't good enough, the environmental issues not even taken in to consideration.

After the R-line Volvo successfully introduced the R-Design line on nearly of the currently available models. This even when some models didn't even have R-Line heritage. Milking a certain concept will only work for so long. Eventually the R-Design line will become meaningless because there is no more R-Line to base the idea upon. The R-Design concept is nothing more than making a much desired but hard to reach "Halo" available to the many by offering the looks but not the power at a better reachable level. With no more Halo being available this concept will soon be dead in the water. Pouring money is a confusing and basically useless campaign isn't going to help either. With the T6 power on tap the better choice would be to put the driver back in control by installing a simple manual transmission which, most likely, can be developed for far less cost compared to a useless ad campaign. Eventually the best advertisement money can buy will sell the car and create the halo while at it. Which advertisement that might be is easy, word of mouth..
Despite the negative vibes surrounding the former S60R and V70R this is what those cars did. The only thing missing was that they needed a second chance after a not so good start.

New front end and two whole STCC seasons covered in testing even before the first race of the season



Volvo and Polestar will commence this years STCC season on April 24 April at Jyllandsringen in Denmark. The ambition is to defend both the driver and team championship titles. At center stage for this ambition is the new race car.

"This is the fastest Volvo I have ever driven" says driver Robert Dahlgren.

The most distinctive feature on the new car is its new front end. Just as on the road going version, the front end is longer, lower, wider and meaner looking. Most important, it creates a higher degree of ground force in the front and improves the airflow around the whole car.

"We have worked very hard to gain maximum advantage from the face lift on the new C30, spending countless hours in Volvos wind tunnel to do so" says Jan Andersson, Technical Director for the Volvo team Polestar.

Intensified track testing to secure new titles

Volvo and Polestar were quickest in all qualifying sessions and won half of all race heats in 2009. The key to success was an extensive pre season testing program. Ahead of 2010, the testing program was intensified even further. The team has now clocked 3000 kilometers of track testing to be compared with the total 150 kilometers every driver does during a regular STCC race weekend.

"We have looked in at every aspect of the car – front and rear suspension, engine and aerodynamics. We want to be sure and get a receipt on all improvements and also confirm reliability on all new and reworked components" says Christian Dahl, Team Manager for the Volvo team Polestar.

Victory, regardless

Volvo recently prolonged its cooperation with Polestar through 2012 where Polestar was given extended responsibility as Volvos official partner in developing and running Volvos official cars in STCC. Next on the agenda now are 18 very tough races for 450 points in total. However, Volvo Car Corporation Motorsport Director, Derek Crabb, feels victory is already at hand:

"In 2007 we proved together that a race car can win using a greener fuel when we pioneered bio-ethanol in racing instead of petrol. In 2008 we proved that the fastest car does not arrive in a box from Germany or the UK. In 2009 we proved that our green DRIVe technology for the street also outperformed everything on a race track. All employees together with Volvo and Polestar enthusiasts have a proud confirmation today that we dare and that we can. This is worth more than points."


Source: Polestar

Months of testing on track and in wind tunnel have come to an end for Volvos STCC team Polestar. The 2010 STCC racer is now ready and will be revealed on Friday April 9. Find out then why Volvo and Polestar decided to retire the 2009 championship winner and build a completely new C30 racer for 2010.


Source: Polestar

After having designed and run Volvo's STCC championship winning C30 and launched Polestar Performance power optimization for Volvo cars in 2009, the engineers at Polestar needed a new challenge. This time they got a standard Volvo C30 and free hands to design and build a concept of their dreams street car.

The project has been named Performance Concept Prototype, PCP to emphasize its main purpose; to find out what happens when a team of racing engineers and designers get free hands to do what they want with a car they normally develop to fit specific race regulations.

"We love the Volvo C30, it’s a great car from start with a huge potential for development with its low weight and low centre of gravity. It’s also a great road car. But now we go far further by combining the road car with cutting edge racing technology" says Robert Dahlgren, race and development driver at Polestar.

"It’s particularly inspiring to develop this specific C30. This car is built just in the way we want to do it. Polestar has probably spent more time than anyone else in the world to get speed out of the C30, and this time we can realize ideas without being halted by specific race regulations" says Jan Andersson, technical director at Polestar Racing.

The concept includes an 400PS-engine, AWD, aerodynamics based on Polestar race car data and much more.

Updates on the project, including technical specifications, will be posted on our web site.

First public appearance of the PCP will be at Gothenburg MotorShow 22-25 April.

Source: Polestar