{"id":25497,"date":"2023-08-20T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T07:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/?p=25497"},"modified":"2023-08-15T15:34:20","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T14:34:20","slug":"1996-volvo-850-r-auction-car-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/1996-volvo-850-r-auction-car-of-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"1996 Volvo 850 R – Auction Car of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on from the woefully sad news<\/a> that Volvo are no longer going to be selling estate cars here in the UK our eyes inevitably turned wagon-ward as we had a gander through the Car & Classic classifieds and auction listings for some stretched Swedish metal and low and behold this 1996 Volvo 850 R popped up in our search results. We’ve mentioned the 850 T5-R estate before as a Classified of the Week back at the beginning of 2022 but the 850 R is a little different, as we’ll find out.<\/p>\n

\"Volvo,<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in ’94, with echoes of the Group A 240 Turbo Flying Brick still ringing in Volvo’s ears (we really need to do a feature on this beast), it made the quite frankly brilliant decision to team up with racing and engineering specialists Tom Walkinshaw Racing to produce an 850 estate Super Touring Car to compete in the BTCC. As incongruous as an estate car may have seemed lining up alongside the race-prepped saloons of rivals like Ford and BMW the Volvos, driven by Rickard Rydell and Jan Lammers, managed to rack up some serious points, finishing eighth overall in their inaugural season and indelibly searing the image of a blue and white 850 clipping the apex on two wheels into the collective automotive consciousness in the process. This was back when racing was racing kids.<\/p>\n