Lynk & Co is a new venture from Volvo owner Geely that ultimately aims to get cars on the road in a novel way: through month-to-month “subscriptions” designed to be far more flexible than the current cumbersome dealership and ownership model. What better way to show how viable that is than setting a couple of Nürburgring records in a Lynk & Co race car?
Yeah. I don’t really get it either? But it’s a thing that definitely happened.
Lynk & Co today announced that its race car concept, the Lynk & Co 03 from Cyan Racing (formerly Polestar), is now the quickest four-door car and the quickest front-wheel drive car to lap the Nordschleife. The automaker also says this marks the first time that a Chinese manufacturer has claimed a record on the ’Ring with a mass production-based car.
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The time: seven minutes and 20.143 seconds. Here’s the onboard:
Cyan Racing’s take on the 03 is legit. It packs a 2.0-liter turbo-four good for a claimed 528 horsepower and 372 lb-ft of torque. They say it did the ’Ring three seconds quicker than a Jaguar sedan—the XE SV Project 8, I presume—and 25 seconds quicker for the front-wheel drive record, formerly held by Renault’s Mégane R.S. Trophy-R.
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The vehicle remains a “concept” for now, though as Motor 1 notes it is road legal in Sweden and that a very limited run of production cars will be sold to some VIPs. We’re getting into super murky areas here about what’s a “production” car and what isn’t. Also unclear is where this leaves that heavily modified Prodrive Subaru WRX STI that did it under seven minutes a few years ago. I don’t really care to go there. Point is, the Cyan Racing 03 is fast.
The biggest question for me is: why? If Lynk & Co’s goal is mobility and the main selling point is the subscription model, do the ‘Ring times of its extremely overpowered racing “concept” even matter? Then again, ’Ring times, in general, don’t matter much, especially when the cars used live in gray areas like this one. And if nothing else, racing’s a good way to get Lynk & Co’s name out there, which is pretty much what they’ve copped to doing.
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Maybe the correct response is: why not? I should probably stop overthinking things and enjoy the fast car.
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