Some cool stuff about the BTCC wagons and engines

[j-dawg]

The Volvo BTCC wagons from the '90s are some of the more memorable cars out of the last few decades of racing. Thought I'd link to a pretty basic article on it just posted to one of my favorite sites, Speedhunters. It's nothing new, but it's nice to see the car in the spotlight.

http://www.speedhunters.com/2015/05/thr ... cs-window/

And in the comments I saw this neato article summarizing some of the work that went into squeezing nearly 300hp out of those 2.0 NA B5s:
http://www.supertouringregister.com/document/4/
The article has a few insights into why the engine is designed as it is. It's easy to forget sometimes the things engineers have to balance when designing something as complex as an engine.

It took them until after the wagons were swapped for sedans to really make the 850s competitive, but the wagons were just such crazy things to make into race cars. The video on the Speedhunters page is great - BTCC racing was seriously balls-to-the-wall.

Another cool Speedhunters Volvo article: http://www.speedhunters.com/2013/07/a-s ... any-other/

[850 LPT]

Cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

[polskamafia mjl]

Nice find!

[jimmy57]

I wished they would have shown the engine bay.
The engine was tilted way back and the driveshaft for right side passed under intake. Custom gearbox of course. Low center of mass and better weight distribution. HUGE invidual throttles with stacks. Gorgeous hardware. The kind BIG money buys. TWR put on a show at a Volvo event at Circuit Zolder in 99 and had a couple of cars and did some hot laps for us. No rides in the BTCC cars but we did get rides by Volvo drivers in S40s (the 4 cylinder ones), only they did a parking lot course lap up on two wheels.

[mika]

I came across a pic of the saloons engine bay a while back, will try to dig it up. It is def on the minimalist side

[abscate]

Great Video - I think I need more boost..