Volvo 850R ITB'd Naturally-Aspirated BTCC Build | American Tuned ft. Rob Dahm

The Volvo station wagon holds a very special place in the heart of Swedish car enthusiasts. I mean enthusiasts of Swedish cars, some of whom also might be Swedish. But either way, today we're headed to the Proving Grounds at Lime Rock Park to check out a very special flying brick. A tuned Volvo 850. A tribute to the famous Volvo that ran in the British Touring Car Championship back in the 90s. We've also got a stock version of the same car to do a kind of before and after thing. If you're of a certain age, this is your first experience in a Volvo in the back seat. Whether it was your parents or grandparents car. While we're not here for this car particularly, it does let me ask the question. Hey Jacob, are we there yet? Not yet Rob, a couple more minutes. Here, you hungry? Take a granola bar. I don't want... Honey, this is gonna make a mess everywhere. All right, now this is why we're here. So this is my 850. That really kind of started out looking like this one. Three years ago, I bought this car for $850. Literally? The guy wanted $900, but it's not a Volvo 900. It's a Volvo 850. This is kind of a BTCC inspiration. Okay, and those letters? So BTCC stands for British Touring Car Championship. Okay. And in 1994, Volvo actually raced an 850 station wagon. Against like race cars. Against race cars. And there's like this classic shot of like that Volvo 850 wagon like up on two wheels. I wanted to build that. Yes. It's not a replica. That car has a lot of crazy trick stuff that they did. Right. But try to stay true to the spirit of that car. What was the first mod? What was the first thing you touched on it? A friend of mine reached out to me and said that he knew of a special engine where someone had built like a naturally aspirated Volvo engine and then crashed the car. So I ended up buying a wrecked car, pulled the engine out of that and put it in this. Nice. There's not a huge aftermarket support for Volvo, especially these older ones. But there are like factory Volvo parts that you can install. Really? That make them handle a lot better. That's cool. So for example, the C70 Volvo was a two-door convertible on the same chassis. So they added a lot more rigidity to make up for chopping the roof off. Oh, that is an awesome approach. So the subframe is solid mounted instead of having rubber bushings. There's a center brace that goes all the way across. So everything from a C70 convertible is underneath this car. That's like my favorite thing is where, hey, you know, if you know enough, you can save a lot of money and be, you know, creative on how to make the car better. So while it looks wild out here, you're saying that under the hood is actually where a lot of it's at. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we'll hop the hood for you and show you. So this is where things sort of escalated. Yeah. Purely out of stubbornness for staying naturally aspirated and kind of, like I said, following the spirit of the BTCC car. So we have individual throttle bodies and these are actually from a BMW S85 V10. I have to ask, can I drive this? Well, you don't get to drive this before you drive that. OK. See where it came from. Fair enough, but I at least get to have my snacks. Is this your first time driving a Volvo? I hate to admit on camera, but yes. Obviously, this is going to be a very comfortable, smooth ride. These are just great everyday cars. A little bit of body roll there, right? Just a little bit. Looks like we have a doodle pad sliding around in the back seat. I want you to take it around. We'll swap seats right now. OK. You know what? Like with my car, you're going to feel body roll too, because body roll is not necessarily a bad thing. That's maturity speaking right there. That's something that took me a while to figure out. Yeah, controlled weight transfer is good, but obviously this understeer is the biggest issue. So one thing that as many people do with front wheel drive cars is upgrade the rear sway bar. Oh, yeah. From there, you know, a lot of it was like driver controls, like this huge steering wheel. It's really hard to hang on to and you have to cross your arms. The seats you're sliding around, we're sliding around right now pretty good. Obviously not known for being super fast. Here's our little straightaway. This is wide open throttle. That's wide open throttle? That's wide open throttle. It sounds pretty good, you know, five cylinder, but not super fast. Have I graduated to the... I think so. ...to the livery? OK. So I had to ask, why did Volvo race station wagons at all? The myth is that when it came time to set up the race program for that year, they didn't have any sedans available. While they did have a distinct advantage with aero in the back of the vehicle, they were down on power. So with the rules requiring the valves to be at a certain angle, they ended up machining the heads at another angle to make up that precious horsepower. Did that help them win? Well, no. Already so much more connected to the road. Once you hit the straightaway, just mat it all the way to 7,000 right here. No way, that's incredible. It just keeps revving forever. The sound is just like, if you close your eyes, you're back in 1994 in a British touring car. That is so cool. And then like, you know, that smaller steering wheel really makes the rack feel faster, it makes everything more responsive. Big difference. And of course the seats, like I can't stress enough, being able to feel like you're actually in a sports car, not sliding around in some cushy seats. Yeah, it's just fun. This is just a fun car. I think what makes it fun is also how ridiculous it is. Yeah, I've forgotten, because I'm trying to drive it good in front of you, like, I've forgotten what it is, because it's a big car behind me. I don't know how it could be so big and so nimble. That doesn't make sense. Well, welcome to the business end of this vehicle. This is where all the magic happens, and it is very easy to see how it happens. Air goes in through here, makes horsepower here, and comes out the exhaust over here. Very linear process. But it's the entrance of air that I think is really impressive. This looks like an OEM part, in fact, I thought it was, but this one is 3D printed out of metal. While these throttle bodies are stock, they come from a completely different car, and in fact, a completely different engine. Those are five in a row from half of a V10. Then these runners here also look like something off the shelf at Volvo. They aren't. They're 3D printed metal as well. Go to the engine, of course, ported and cammed and all those sort of things. But then down here, another piece, custom exhaust, five runners, all equal length, running down to about the middle of the car, out the back. This power steering pump right here is a very common upgrade for people tuning their cars. It is a Volvo power steering pump, so it is very appropriate that it's in his car. But with a little controller, you can actually use that in just about any car. So it's electric power steering, and that helps when you don't have enough space on the engine itself to drive your power steering. And so it's funny because that's been one of my challenges building one of my cars, and it just fits right at home here in his. This car was really built in the golden era of touring cars. They really hadn't flushed out the idea that people would buy these performance versions of sedans or even station wagons. But the emotion was there. And that's why it's cool to see that Volvo had taken this car and raced it. Why do you need a performance version of a daily driver? Well, I think emotionally, it's very obvious why you'd want something like that. Oh, sounds like that. Just remind you why you build cars, why you love tuning cars. That car started out as nothing special. In fact, it's one of the safer cars in the world. But it's neat things like that where Jacob took a boring car and made it something special. He made it his own, modifying it, making it a capable track car when it's not even meant to do any of that. That's the sort of thing on these episodes, going through all these different adventures, I learned you just see the individuality. You see a person's personality come out as they take something as weird as a Volvo 850 and turn it into their dream car.