Volvo racing equals mistake repeated

What are they thinking? A championship winning race team built a car based on a product from a conservative company known for safety to compete against the "big boys" in the Speed GT series. They are competing against track stars such as Porsche, Viper, Mustang, Cadillac CTS-V, Pontiac GTO and Aston Martin.

Put it this way: Take the stock, dealership showroom versions of those sports cars and put them on a track racing each other. It would be fun, entertaining and basically 2 groups of close racing action. Adding a 257 horsepower Volvo S60 T5 is like adding a pace car. Disastrous. http://www.volvocars.com/us/models/s60/Pages/BuildYourS60.aspx

K-PAX racing won the driver's championship in the proven, reliable and excellent Porsche 911 GT3s' in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, they also won the manufacturer championship for Porsche. Now they built a race car with a Volvo chassis this year in the same series. Talk about kicking the gift horse in the mouth! http://www.kpaxracing.com/

What is this going to do for Volvo? It isn't going to establish a new market segment. They have virtually no racing presence at all in the states, nor are they trying. This was attempted before as well. In 2006 a Volvo managed one rain-soaked win during an otherwise miserable season. This is another doomed effort this year. http://www.swedespeed.com/news/publish/Motorsport_News/article_915.html

Volvo makes fine cars, but here is an attempt from K-Pax, 3 years after a Volvo race car was uncompetitive against the "big boys" like Viper, Corvette, Porsche and purpose-built domestic monsters like the CTS-V and Mustang Cobra trying to make the 2.5L turbocharged engine competitive. Volvo states they are not involved with this vehicle (comment below). K-Pax states they have support from Volvo. http://www.kpaxracing.com/history.html If I had to guess, this means data and technical support.

It really boggles the mind. Not only must this car be purpose-built, making it totally unrelated to the street car, the engine must be modified way beyond what is even remotely possible on the street and that is without major turbo lag. Turbo lag means a delay in power delivery. Frustrating to say the least. The Viper, Corvette and Porsche race cars are closely related to the street car. And even the previously mentioned CTS-V, a factory-built racer, had a powertrain not too far removed from the street car. The Mustang as some pedigree from Ford racing at least, despite a heavily revised chassis like the 'V' and forgoing the supercharger in the GT500.

I always support more manufacturers in any given race series. It is more entertaining, improves the breed and makes for great conversation and debate. But really this effort should be in Speed Touring. They have bitten off more than they can chew.

Granted, a 12th place finish, up from starting 20th is respectable the first time out, even though the other car had a DNF due to mechanical problems (foreshadowing?). http://www.world-challenge.com/events/raceresults.php?ID=804 . They also have top drivers and K-PAX even states it's still early in development. So even if it works, despite the time and expense to be competitive, the big question remains for Volvo: What will this do for you? Volvo better expand on this effort for the buying public or it will be more egg in their face. Prediction: K-PAX returns with Porsche next year and an opportunity for new market appeal for Volvo fails. I'll explain why in an upcoming article that this may actually be a clever exploratory move on Volvo's part.

EDIT 4/19/2009: If this trend continues, I better get ready to eat a lot of crow: http://www.world-challenge.com/news/story.php?ID=1241 Congrats to all involved on a fine effort and results, although they both loss placings vs. their starting positions...