Volvo joins V8 supercars

VOLVO will line up in next year’s V8 Supercars competition, fielding a pair of S60-based racecars wearing Garry Rogers Motorsport colours.

The Swedish car-maker's Australian arm today revealed it would fund a pair of S60-based V8 racecars from next year, in collaboration with Sweden-based racing partner Polestar and Melbourne-based Garry Rogers Motorsport, which will end its long collaboration with Holden.

The team will be called Volvo Polestar Racing, and will hit the track a year after a factory-backed Nissan team and a privateer Mercedes-Benz joined the series, moving it beyond traditional rivals Holden and Ford.

The V8 Supercar Championship’s new Car of the Future architecture was designed to accommodate a wider spread of brands than the traditional local car-makers.

The announcement comes in conjunction with the local media launch of the company’s limited-edition S60 Polestar, a performance sedan rival to the likes of the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG.

The company hopes the launch of a factory-backed racing team will, along with its toe-in-the-water exercise with the S60 Polestar road car, change perceptions of its entire range, most importantly in the BMW 3 Series-rivalling S60 range.

Volvo has previously said Australia was to be used as a “test bed” for the performance-honed S60 Polestar ahead of a potentially wider global roll-out, as the company seeks to put old images of the brand as safe but perhaps unexciting to bed.

But while the racecar will be a rear-drive, V8-powered machine, the S60 road range is a front- or all-wheel-drive car powered by either four- or six-cylinder petrol and diesel powerplants.

Volvo is no stranger to Australian motorsport, having won to Australian Touring Car Championship in 1986, and the Bathurst 1000 in 1998 with its S40-based touring car.

Details are still relatively scarce, but Polestar chief executive Christian Dahl said the S60’s race engine – currently under development in Sweden – would be a derivation of the well-known Yamaha V8 previously used in the S80 and XC90 SUV.

Volvo globally has made a pledge to move towards a four-cylinder only range in its road cars later this decade.

Garry Rogers Motorsport owner Garry Rogers said he hoped to have racecars testing on the track by December this year.

More soon...