The Volvo P1800 Cyan — The Best Re-Imagination Sportscar Yet?

Cyan Racing

World Touring Car powerhouse Cyan Racing has revealed their Volvo P1800 Cyan, an absolutely-gorgeous interpretation of the classic Swedish sportscar that possesses some impressive specs.

The original P1800 debuted in 1960, a whole year before the Jaguar E-Type, and a few years before the Porsche 911 and Ferrari 250 GTO. Though, it never rose to the prominence that these three iconic sportscars achieved through motorsports and, well, just looking beautiful.

Chrstian Dahl, CEO and founder of Cyan Racing says they decided to do a continuation out the underrated P1800 because they were inspired by what could have been if they were running them on track back in the day. Plus, they are quite proud of their history of racing Volvos all over Europe.

“The Jaguar, the Ferrari and the Porsche are all cars with a continuation.” said Christian Dahl.

“That left us with inspiration to create what could have been if we as a race team had been there during the sixties, racing the P1800, and got to design a road version of our race car.”

“We have done that before with three of our race cars, the Volvo C30, the Volvo S60, when we were known as Polestar, and last year the Lynk & Co 03 Cyan. The Volvo P1800 Cyan is our interpretation of what could have been.”

“The first Volvo P1800 Cyan carries our blue and yellow racing colors to mark our heritage.”

Cyan Racing

This is a driver’s car first and foremost, as Christian continues to explain when talking about the use of modern tech and whether to use an electric powertrain.

“Obviously we could have built an electric Volvo P1800 filled with all the latest technology, comfort and luxury. But that was not what we wanted,” said Christian Dahl.

“Amid this paradigm shift we decided to slow down time and freeze a part of it in our own time capsule. To take the best from the golden sixties and combine it with our capabilities of today, keeping a pure yet refined driving experience.”

No driver aids such as stability control, ABS, or even power brakes are present in the P1800 Cyan, which presumably saves some weight and makes way for some impressive specs elsewhere.

Under the long hood is a two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine is based on the same engine as used in their world title-winning Volvo S60 TC1 race car, producing 420 horsepower and has a redline of 7700 RPM. Its gearbox is a 5-speed manual unit produced by Holinger, which is connected to a limited slip differential that sends power to the rear wheels, to make the most of the experience behind the wheel.

Cyan Racing

Diving into its chassis, it’s all race car engineering: double wishbone suspension front and rear with three-way adjustable dampers, adjustable sway bars, and even a titanium roll cage added for safety and rigidity. To slow down this little Swedish beast, it has massive 362x32mm discs up front, 330×25.4mm out back, and 4-piston calipers all around.

When we say little Swedish beast, we really mean it: it’s just under 2200 lbs. That’s more pupil-expanding than finding a barely-scathed Malm in the scratch-and-dent section at Ikea.

Cramming all of this go-fast tech into a little aluminum/steel P1800 is quite impressive, and makes us ask: are continuation 911s just a tad overplayed?