Two-thousand-horsepower Bugattis, Koenigseggs and new electric hypercars aren’t the only things that detonate the car-loving parts of the internet. Earlier this year, a Swedish motorsport company called Cyan Racing dropped a few images of its “restomod” version of Volvo’s P1800 and the place went wild. Sure, re-engineering an old car to accommodate new parts and technology has definitely been a major (if unexpected) thing this past decade or so, and anyone who’s driven Singer’s reimagining of the Porsche 911, Eagle’s vivid reworking of the Jaguar E-type, or the Alfaholics GTA-R will know that these cars are almost transcendentally good. But an old Volvo?
The P1800’s place in the pop-cultural firmament is entirely down to its appearance alongside Roger Moore in the Sixties television series The Saint. But nobody under the age of 50 will have any recollection of that, and even car nerds with Scandinavian proclivities will concede that the P1800 is mining a rare – if admittedly stylish – groove. Cyan Racing, though, has serious form, as front-runner for decades in partnership with Volvo in the World Touring Car Championship (in its former guise as Polestar it also did such excellent work tuning the company’s road cars that Volvo bought the firm and re-purposed it for its superb EV spin-off brand).
Look a bit more closely at those images of the elfin (cyan) blue coupe with the yellow bonnet stripe, and it’s clearly possessed of the right stuff. It’s there in its stance and proportions, two things that are fundamental to the aesthetic allure of any car, even if you’re not immediately aware of it. The lights and chrome grille are a throwback to an era when cars still had recognisable faces, before automotive designers became obsessed with making everything look as aggressively furrow-browed as the Government’s chief medical advisers during a pandemic. The P1800’s signature rear fins are less pronounced here, but every detail is flawlessly executed. I love the slender chrome bumpers and the single exit central exhaust.
But this goes way, way beyond the superficialities.
The truth is, there isn’t a great deal of P1800 left in this new reimagining. Volvo made about 45,000 of them, between 1961 and 1973, and Cyan Racing can resurrect even the most addled of examples. Aside from assuming a donor car’s identity, the only carry-over parts are in the pillars supporting the roof, the bonnet release mechanism, the windscreen wipers, and the handbrake lever.
So really what we’re talking about here is a largely new car, designed and engineered by a top racing team, infused with the spirit of a left-field old-timer. The chassis is made of high-tensile steel, the body panels of carbon fibre, and the roll cage inside is another nod to its creator’s competition heritage. A solution like this isn’t cheap, but it promotes the sort of structural rigidity that the original P1800 could only have dreamt of. Even for a perennially safety-conscious car maker like Volvo, those were different days.
This is an exceptionally well-made car. The engine bay is meticulously finished, and houses Volvo’s current 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine. In the excellent S60, the turbo- and supercharged T8 version wrings almost 400bhp out of it, but here Cyan Racing has elected just to turbocharge it, the blower sitting lower down, almost out of sight. It’s also devoid of all the plastic cladding that makes most modern engines such uninspiring things to look at. Peak power is 414bhp, arriving at 7000rpm, with a red-line 700rpm further on. As the car weighs just 990kg, this is more than enough to keep things extremely entertaining.
Elsewhere, the P1800 is determinedly old-school in the best possible way. It uses a five-speed manual gearbox sourced from Australian specialist Holinger, and is defiantly rear-drive only, although a limited slip differential ensures that it doesn’t just spin its power idly away. Modern niceties such as traction control or even anti-lock brakes are absent, although power steering is fitted. The suspension uses race-spec double wishbones all round and expensive fully adjustable dampers.
The competition-car feel is even more pronounced once you’re inside, not least because you’ve got to clamber past the roll cage and adjust the straps on a four-point race harness. It’s a bit of a faff but the seats are superb, and the driving position absolutely perfect. The dashboard is a powerful antidote to contemporary tech overload: the main dials are big and beautiful, with three smaller auxiliary gauges, and a row of toggle switches labelled in Swedish underneath. That’s it. The rear-view mirror, meanwhile, sits on top of the dash rather than being affixed to the roof. The fit and finish are exemplary, the leather and fabrics used consistent with Sweden’s considerable reputation in this area.
Turn a tiny little key to fire up the engine. A three-pedal set-up in the footwell is an increasing rarity, but the P1800’s control weights are exquisite (there’s a big footrest, too, while main beam for the lights is done by pushing a button with your left foot). I’m aware that Cyan Racing’s general manager, the wonderfully affable Hans Bååth, is watching as I pull away, but the throttle is perfectly calibrated, the clutch weighty but not obstreperous. It’s a car that needs some attention at low speeds but it won't embarrass you or have a hissy fit.
It’s also currently one of one and costs £380k, so a degree of circumspection is needed on the slippery country roads I soon find myself on. It’s noisy, both the engine and the transmission contributing an above-average number of decibels, with the turbo whoosh adding another layer of sonics. But the crucial thing this spectacularly charismatic little car does, that so many modern supercars forget to do, is turn every mile into an adventure in mechanical intimacy. The steering is sublime, the ride necessarily firm but so well damped that the P1800 shrugs off even quite nasty surface imperfections, while the gearshift is little short of brilliant, despite its skinny stick. It will slide around if you know what you’re doing, but the chassis is so good that even if you have fists of ham it won’t automatically dump you in the hedge.
Bååth tells me that the team has worked hard to find a useable on-road balance, and admits there’s a much more hardcore version, back home near Gothenburg, on bigger tyres, that generates more grip and g-force. As it is, it’s set up in such a way that you don’t need to drive like your trousers are on fire to experience some genuine sensation: the P1800 will entertain you royally at speeds that won’t involve a high-speed police chase and six months in chokey. That’s a different sort of sustainable performance “motoring” right there.
The Lancia Delta is back, boxier and better than ever
