Volvo touring cars are an important part of the company's racing history, and the torchbearer for the familiar Polestar blue flame comes from an unexpected sibling in the Geely carmaker portfolio: Lynk & Co. The new brand has bet on car sharing and mobility solutions earlier, so a motorsport-themed outing is certainly a new foray for it.
Lynk & Co announced today that it will take part in the FIA WTCR racing series with a new sedan car, that will also spawn a road-going concept version with 500 horsepower. The car is based on Lynk's 03 sedan, which in turn shares its CMA underpinnings with the Volvo XC40 and its upcoming S40/V40 siblings. Geely Group Motorsport says the 03 TCR race car, seen here in render images, will be made available to customer teams worldwide.
And while Polestar, Lynk and Volvo drum up electric vehicle technology, the TCR car is powered by a 350-horsepower version of the two-liter four-cylinder internal combustion engine doing company-wide duty. The front-wheel-drive car has a six-speed sequential gearbox and, as the promotional video shows, three pedals. Geely says the customer racing cars are priced at 130,000 euros, or around $150,000. Other brands competing in WTCR are Alfa Romeo, Audi, Seat's Cupra, Honda, Hyundai, Peugeot and Volkswagen.
The first 03 TCRs are delivered in 2019 to touring car racing champions Cyan Racing, whose winning driver, Thed Björk, presented the 03 TCR today at an event at the Fuji Raceway in Japan. Cyan is the current-day iteration of what Polestar originally was, and its full name is still Polestar Cyan Racing. The video, too, still shows racing Volvos competing in Polestar colors.
The road-going concept will be developed together with Geely Group Motorsport and Cyan Racing, as a "Cyan Racing's interpretation of a TCR race car for the road". It will be the first in line of more performance goodies for Lynk cars, and a 500-hp figure is a nice round number for a halo car.
