The new Volvo P1800 Cyan ‘GT’ is your dream restomod of the day

Swedish touring car enthusiasts Cyan Racing have revealed a less powerful, less focused, softer version of a very old Volvo the world appears to have largely forgotten. Expensive, too.

So, sweep all of that aside immediately and acquaint yourselves with the mind-numbingly desirable Volvo P1800 Cyan ‘GT’; a comfort-orientated iteration of the rather stunning P1800 Cyan first revealed back in 2020.

That 2020 car was essentially a turbocharged thought experiment: what if Cyan Racing, multiple touring car world champions, had been operating in the 1960s during the reign of the original P1800? What kind of car would they have cooked up?

A bloody desirable one, that’s what. This 2024 follow-up tones down the original’s track-focused heroics, and instead redials the whole thing back to the original P1800’s schtick: grand touring.

As such, the fully adjustable suspension has been tweaked for country roads and proper long distance cruising (read: it’s probably a bit softer) as opposed to the original car’s “flat-out-through-this-apex-uh-oh-this-is-going-very-sideways-very-quickly’.

There’s a wider choice of engine output too. Where the original car punched out 414bhp from its turbocharged 2.0-litre touring car engine (the same one that powered Cyan’s S60 TC1 car to the 2017 WTCC title), you can now choose from between 345bhp and 414bhp. Cyan says the performance is now tuned for ‘drivability’ rather than outright grunt.

It’s matched to a five-speed Holinger gearbox (and rear-wheel-drive), mounted in the same wider, reinforced and upgraded bodyshell as the 2020 car. Which means it’s a combination of high-strength steel and carbon fibre, with the original P1800’s weaker points ironed out.

Heck, there’s more sound deadening on board this time. More comfortable seats. Even the titanium roll cage has been redesigned for better comfort. It’s beautifully analogue inside, too, and this first car – built for a client in the US – features a gorgeous green body paired with a sand-coloured interior. Naturally, each car is completely bespoke to each customer.

Which is why each car takes between 12-15 months to build, with the average price hovering around the $600,000 mark. There’s no set number of cars to be built, Cyan told TG, but it’ll be super low volume.

“The new version highlights the versatility and almost endless tailoring options of the Volvo P1800 Cyan, adding another dimension to our interpretation of the original model,” said Cyan boss Christian Dahl.