The Volvo that Erle McRae Racing leased, this Volvo caught fire and burned up on Donington -85. The car was leased from Greger
Petersson-Sportpromotion, Sweden. However I find this very strange why like you say KA a team from Australia leases a Volvo from
Sweden to race in England at Donington. And the other Volvo was no where to be found after this race, it was a Volvo Magum Racing
was involved with. It was a more privateer team. However the Volvo 240 was never in the BTCC-series, only time Volvo droved
in England was in the ETC-series.
However there were other Volvo teams who raced in with great succes in Finland, Germany and ofcourse here in Sweden where the Group-A
-series was one of the most popular series at that time. The Glory for Volvo in the Group-A-series here in Sweden was between -87,-88 and-89.
And the best team Volvo ever enterd with who was really succesfull was the Swiss team Eggenberger Motorsport in -85. The R.A.S. Sport team
in -86 was however not the same succes as the Eggenberger Team due to the cheating that Volvo got caught for with the R.A.S. Sport team.
Erle McRae Racing on Donington -85 when the car caught fire.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by KA
The Volvos I suspect were always a bit of a mystery to British fans- we never saw them over here other than at the ETCC rounds, and so I guess they were maybe regarded something slightly exotic compared to the Rovers etc we saw in the BTCC- after all, we even managed a Maserati Biturbo in the BTCC, but never a Volvo....
Certainly I knew comparitively little about them until discovering Bjorn's website, which I've dipped into a couple of times, but really need to work through. I saw the ETCC rounds at either, or occasionally both, Silverstone and Donington from 1985-8, so remember seeing the Eggenberger cars in 85 and the RAS Sport ones in 86, but not that many more. Looking at DTM and Anderstorp ETCC results from the period, there seemed to be loads of them in Sweden and Germany, and even one or two in Portugal but we never seemed to hear much about those over here
Apart from the works cars, I only really remember the 'Luna' car (Anders Olofsson/Ulf Granberg as I recall in 85?) and a couple of privateer entries at Donington in 1985- a white Magnum Racing example, with Slim Borgudd on board amongst others
http://www.racingsportscars.com/etcc...-05-05-029.jpg
and the car leased by Charlie O'Brien etc, entered under the 'Erle McRae Racing' banner.
http://www.racingsportscars.com/etcc...-05-05-017.jpg
That 'Erle McRae' entry particularly intrigues me- why the Australians turned up for a one-off BTCC outing (I seem to recall reading somewhere that it may have been connected with the deal to buy a Sytner BMW or two?), and how they came to appear in a Volvo?
If they were going to Donington to put together a deal on a 635 from Sytner, why did they lease a Volvo for the race?- Sweden seems a long way to go for a pair of Australians to lease a car for a one-off race at Donington- Was it a car already entered and they took the opportunity to rent a ride in the Volvo, or, more interestingly, was something more ambitious involved- ie, apart from talking to Sytner, had they also been talking to the Swedish outfit (which one?) about buying a Volvo for Bathurst? |