The Volvo P1800 Cyan is not from Volvo but from a company close to Volvo’s heart: Cyan Racing, formerly the Volvo race team known from 1996 to 2015 as Polestar. It’s the outfit that gave Volvo its first world touring car title in 2017 (and two subsequent WTC titles) so it knows a bit about both Volvos and making them go fast.
The idea behind it, as Cyan Racing founder and chief executive Christian Dahl explains, is to imagine what a roadgoing version of a P1800 race car would have been like in the 1960s, had such a car ever been built. It never was because the P1800 was never a race car.
In fact the P1800, for all its style, was never a fast car in its day. Even the best fuel-injected version had only 130PS and a 0-60mph time of around 9.5 seconds. No performance figures are quoted for its 2020 successor but with 420PS (309kW) and weighing in at under a tonne, it is sure to be rapid. Cyan just says the car will be capable on a circuit and civilised on road.