BTCC 850 Estate: Time For Tea?
"They all laughed when Volvo said they'd be entering an estate, but they don't think it's funny anymore"
Originally Volvo's own tribute video for the 850 was going to feature here. It's not bad but, well, this is better. Five minutes of highlights from the 1994 BTCC season with the big Volvo as the focus and Murray Walker commentating. There's outbraking, smashes, bashes, strewn bumpers and flared tempers. It's magnificent.
The vid is also a great reminder of when British touring cars really mattered to manufacturers and when budgets allowed a big motorsport programme. See at 0:58 where seven different cars are in the train going up to Dingle Dell at Brands: Volvo, Alfa Romeo, Vauxhall, Renault, BMW, Ford, Nissan. Keep a look out for a Castrol Toyota Carina E too. That livery doesn't look great on every motorsport Toyota it would seem.
Anyway, it's a super vid with fantastic racing throughout. Put the kettle on and enjoy!
Watch it here.
When the Volvo 850 was launched in 1991 Volvo wanted to upgrade their image. The 850 was a very good step into the right direction.
I worked in the machine shop but remember the team guys and the designers saying at the time that it had a better drag coefficient than the saloon.
It is hard to convey the impact these had at the time, it was massive, a Volvo, no less an estate Volvo in the BTCC and doing ok, edgy adverts and they were, for a time a pretty cool car to own, still are really, still look good.
My old one is apparently SORNed, the MOT ran out in 2014, hope it isnt dead, turned up on Ebay a few years back as a "Time Warp" car, L471AFE
It was a great time but, as is always the case, when you have eight manufacturers involved seven have to lose. Then they drop out and leave the sport in ruins. It's only just recovered in the last few years from the Super Touring routing that it took in the early naughties.
Where the estate would probably lose out to the saloon is in structural rigidity and weight, both total weight and the fact that it's CoG would be a bit higher. A decent cage would minimise the difference in rigidity though and presumably the BTCC had a minimum weight limit so that disadvantage wouldn't have been too big.
Where the estate would probably lose out to the saloon is in structural rigidity and weight, both total weight and the fact that it's CoG would be a bit higher. A decent cage would minimise the difference in rigidity though and presumably the BTCC had a minimum weight limit so that disadvantage wouldn't have been too big.
Where the estate would probably lose out to the saloon is in structural rigidity and weight, both total weight and the fact that it's CoG would be a bit higher. A decent cage would minimise the difference in rigidity though and presumably the BTCC had a minimum weight limit so that disadvantage wouldn't have been too big.
The cars would probably be built to less than the minimum weight limit and ballasted up to comply.
However it was the Alfa's rule bending aero pack that started the slide towards spiralling costs, with the rules changing and everyone else following suit in 1995. A shame as it was a great era
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