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From Swedespeed.com Miscellaneous Features 2006 was a banner year for Volvo at the SEMA Show. The aftermarket industry event in Las Vegas has always been an important show for the Swedish auto maker, but the impending launch of the C30 made last year’s event an even more aggressively planned-for display. Key to that display was the plan to supply three preproduction C30s to aftermarket tuners even before the car had been introduced at the Paris Auto Show or even photos shown on the web. The whole process started with secrecy and continued at a break-neck pace before the three C30’s November debut. With the 2007 SEMA Show just one week away, Swedespeed will be offering a three-part look back at these three C30s.
Swedespeed: So you get this zero series car. It’s preproduction. It is going to go to either the museum or the scrap yard afterwards. Where do you go from there? This is a car that nobody else has. Probably in the beginning, you couldn't take it outside? Nicholson: Unfortunately, the fabrication shop that we used was a little backed up from finishing up some other projects, so (the C30) actually sat at our place for a bit, pretty much untouched other than going through and taking notes so that we could start working on some of the production pieces. We only had it for a week or so where we had to keep it under a car cover and kept it under wraps. We had to be careful who came through the shop, but then the official press photos were out. Then it could be taken out – not that it got driven anywhere. Essentially we had about seventy days from when we started turning the first wrenches on it until Volvo picked it up for the first round of photo shoots. Swedespeed: If you could do the virtual walk around, can you itemize for us what was done to it? Nicholson: Starting with the exterior, we knew we wanted to make a statement with the car in a lot of respects. We started by literally shearing the sides of the car off. All the vertical panels, the quarter panels, doors, fenders were stretched or pulled six inches in the rear and it actually tapers down to no stretch at all at the front of the front fenders. We did all the work in metal. It is not fiberglass, although that would have been much easier. I have a great team of craftsmen around me and they worked diligently at massaging the metal. The end result, if you were to look at the car from an above view, gives a real wedge shape to it. The paint on it is BASF Competition Yellow. The car that we received was black. So that involved, once all the body work was done, going through and jamming the car and getting everything bright yellow. I knew that I wanted to put a lot of tire under the car. That is one of the things that dictated the width of the rear. We were able to put a 355/25-19 Pirelli under the rear-- literally the widest 19 inch tire that is in manufacture. Only Pirelli makes it right now. Again, with the Formula One theme, we created a fully functional rear diffuser to draw air out from underneath the car and create some more down force. At the front, we actually extended the nose about four inches to give it more of a Formula One nose - kind of the moustache front spoiler theme. We put a roof spoiler on it. Both the front and the roof spoiler are adjustable.
When you get into the details of the car, you begin to understand how much work it was to create the body and make it look factory. Opening the doors, you see the expansion in the sills, in the door itself, in the quarter panel--quite a bit of work went into these details. As the rear of the car was taking shape, we knew that we wanted to do something different with the exhaust exits, rather than traditional under car exit. At first, we were going to do it out of the top shoulders of the quarter panel, sliced even with the tops of the quarter panels. That was looking good, but as we saw it coming together, it was a nice element there that we could make it rear facing, so we did that. The exhaust system uses a custom built muffler, literally from scratch. The muffler straddles the drive shaft, with a single in, dual out design. It is perfectly baffled and channeled inside to give us what we wanted in terms of sound. It actually has a higher pitch exhaust note rather than a rumble, again going with the Formula 1 theme. We wanted to have the right sound also. The exhaust tips themselves were hand crafted and the graphite rings around them were cut out of billet aluminum. The wheel and tire fitment includes our own unique design of wheel. In the rear it is a 19x13, again with the 355/25-19 and the front is a 19x9 with 265/35-19 by Pirelli. The wheels have graphite centers with a brushed and cleared aluminum inner and outer hoops to give it a nice contrast. We didn't want anything that was too “bling”. We wanted something that was almost, in a certain way, brutal and ugly, something very motorsports just to carry that theme through. The wheels have fully functional single center nut locking mechanisms with pin drive worked into the back of the wheel, again for that motorsports element. Behind the wheels is one of my favorite elements - that being the brakes. It seems like we have always had fun with brakes over the years. The first year, with the blue S60R, we had the twin 6 piston calipers in the front and the single 6 pistons in the rear. Two years ago, the S40 had 8-piston AP liquid cooled calipers in the front and 6-piston calipers in the rear. Even the XC90 that was built for the Los Angeles Auto Show last year had 8-piston Brembos in front and 4-piston Brembos in the rear. So this year we had a clean slate and a group of talented people around us. We literally designed and engineered our own brake system from scratch. At the front, we came up with a 14-piston caliper that actually sweep 191 degrees of the rotors. The front rotors are 386 mm full floating units that are directionally vented. At the rear are 6-piston calipers, again a caliper of our own design, with 362 mm rotors. We used our EVOLVE log as the slotting pattern—not something I’ve seen anyone ever do and a nice touch for a showcar. Anything like this for production would use standard slots.
It is tough to see when the wheels are on the car, but there are three planes to each of the calipers. Between those planes, each of the cylinders and the piston assemblies are finned and literally air-cooled. Because we had a clean slate, we said, "what can we do?" We wanted to execute every element with a motorsports mentality. So, even at that level of detail we worked in elements to keep brake fluid from coming anywhere near boiling. Even though no one can really see it, it is those sort of details and ingenious thinking that we are quite proud of. Everything is fully functional - works great. Most show cars that you see that have any sort of a “performance” rear brake system usually do not have any sort of parking brake. Reason being, that there is no performance aftermarket brake caliper that integrates both the parking brake cable and the hydraulic pressure from the center braking system. Looking from under hood, you will see, built into the upper strut brace, two smaller master cylinders that literally convert the cable energy from the parking brake into hydraulic pressure that actually clamps the front calipers. With that, we can actually use it as a sort of launch control. You can grab the e-brake to launch, build up a ton of boost, drop the e-brake and have that much more into the boost. Swedespeed: So you probably wouldn't want to use it as a parking brake so much because you might warp the rotors. It’s more for launch? Nicholson: It is fully usable for both keeping the car in place when parked and for launching. Swedespeed: How many pads fit on one of those? Nicholson: Each front caliper has 137 different components. It is really quite an assembly - essentially 3 sets of brake pads per caliper, six pads total per caliper. There’s quite a bit of contact surface area there. Swedespeed: Tell me about the engine? Under hood, starting with the 2.5 liter 5-cylinder Volvo motor, we have created a true sequential twin turbo system for it. The small primary turbo is actually a little bit smaller than the factory turbo on the C30, so it generates instant boost. It runs out of breath at about 3200 RPM, so long before it gets to that point the larger turbo is already spooling. We designed a barrel valve assembly that allows the exhaust signal to start going over to the larger turbo earlier on, while still giving good pressure to the primary one. At about 2800 RPM, the larger turbo is lit and giving full pressure. There is a one-way check valve in the pressure side of the plumbing to make sure that the boost signal out of the small one does not go back into the larger turbo and stall the larger turbo. From there, the boosted air goes into our fabricated intake manifold. Rather than using a traditional air to air intercooler, which at 100% efficiency (not possible) will only bring the charged air down to ambient temperature, we took a different approach. Built into our fabricated intake manifold is literally an air conditioner evaporator coil that is plumbed with the factory air conditioning system. Turn on the air conditioning and it super cools the whole intake manifold assembly. So, as the heated, charged air passes over the coils, we can drop the charged air down to 40 degrees or so if we wanted to. During the build, my engineer, Mano Agulian, pulled me aside and said, "I don't want to do an intercooler. I want to do something different. What else is out there?" We brainstormed for a bit kicking around the usual approached of water to air, spray nitrous, spray CO2, etc. I had this idea, really for drag racing cars that are supercharged, to be able to integrate an air conditioning system because it is so efficient and it is regenerative. It’s not like we are spraying nitrous over something that is good for a quick shot or until the bottle runs out type thing. We can keep producing cold charged air year after year.
Swedespeed: It will obviously make more power than the compressor will rob? Nicholson: Yes, no question. It really doesn't cost that much in terms of power to run an AC compressor any more. Years ago, you could really feel if the AC compressor was on and you were losing power. Swedespeed: You also did a Haldex (all-wheel drive system)? Nicholson: The C30 is going to be launched as a front-wheel drive car, and with 507 horsepower and 468 foot pounds of torque, that would be a lot for the front wheels alone. So we used components, angle gear, drive shaft, rear differential off of an S40 all wheel drive to make our C30 full functioning All Wheel Drive. All of the control arms in the rear suspension were fabricated so that wasn't an issue. Some of the challenges were relocating the fuel cell, because the drive shaft intersected with the fuel cell. So, we moved the fuel cell and all of the evap systems, created a strong box for the fuel cell and created a false trunk floor for it. We also relocated the battery to the rear hatch area. The hardware side of it was challenging, but not the end of the world. Really, the harder side was the electronics and software side. That was where I was able to call on my friends from Haldex. They created both a harness for it and did all the research to integrate it in to the CANBUS system and then created a specific file for the car. Swedespeed: Is that something replicable? If you have a customer that picks up a C30 next summer when they hit the market and then wants a C30 all-wheel drive and they have more money than sense. Nicholson: It is something that could be replicated. Because the C30 essentially shares the P1 chassis with the S40/V50, there are some shared components which greatly facilitate the swap. Swedespeed: If you were not throwing in such an extravagant rear suspension system as you've done, would the floor pan accept the hardware from the S40? Nicholson: To be honest with you, I do not know because we had already done a lot of the rear suspension separate from that, knowing how we would integrate it. We didn't bolt into place the stock all-wheel drive. It was never at that point. It was all built on a bench. Replicable yes, but certainly challenging and couldn't be done without Haldex's help.
Swedespeed: How about inside the car? Nicholson: This is one thing that we do have ready for production now - the full interior for it. It is a perforated black and graphite leather interior with yellow stitching. We didn't want too much attention brought to the interior because we wanted to really pull people into the details of the exterior of the car, the brakes, wheel / tire fitment and under hood. So we left the interior pretty subtle, although we did integrate a safety structure into the car. Most people would call it a roll cage, but we call it a safety structure because it is a Volvo after all... It has six point mounting and is very well engineered, very strong. We left the audio system alone because it has got such a great audio system from the factory with the Alpine amps and the DynAudio speakers and to do much audio just wasn't appropriate for what the theme of the car was. It was more about the driving experience than the entertainment experience. A few other minor elements include our foot pedals, foot rest, floor carpets, and a few elements to the center stack. Swedespeed: Obviously you guys didn't have a whole lot of time. The car arrived in June or July? Nicholson: From the day the project was started until the day it was delivered was 70 days straight through—weekends included. Swedespeed: Was it down to the wire? Nicholson: It was definitely down to the wire. Of course, as we laid out the calendar to begin with, we were going to be done about three weeks early - enjoying ourselves, working on other things. But it just progressively slipped further and further behind. As we did the body the first time around, we actually had about 6 inches of stretch in the rear tapering it about 2 inches of stretch widening in the front. This left us with, on the outside of the headlights, small intake of sorts. As we looked at it, we weren't feeling it and it didn't look as balanced as we wanted it to. So we sliced all of the sheet metal off and redid it again. It was those kinds of things and decisions that put us further and further behind schedule. The last week and half, for four or five of us, it was just a few hours of sleep each night and just really thrashing on it to get it all done. The deadline didn't move so we needed to accommodate. Swedespeed: Was there any of the typical last minute craziness that accompanies such a time-sensitive build? Nicholson: We did have a bit of drama. With the transport driver having already patiently waited for two hours, one of the last details was plugging the front grille back into the car. The front and rear bumpers were created in urethane—starting with the factory parts, expanding them and reshaping them. As I plugged the grille into the front bumper, it split the bumper, cracked the paint, leaving a 1/8th inch gap all along the bottom of it. You can see it in some of the PR photos if you were to really look closely. We fixed it after that shoot and before SEMA. Fortunately, we are 45 minutes away from Volvo headquarters and half an hour away from where the cars are prepped and maintained. We got it back and touched up a few other details. Of course, as I walk around the car there are a few other details that I would like to get taken care of and hopefully we will be able to do so before the L.A. Auto Show. At a certain point, the car is what it is and we have done our best effort with the time given. Budget was another thing. All three of the builders were given the same budget and that quickly got absorbed and there was still plenty left to do. Based on the hours given, the components, the material, the literally hundreds on hours of CNC machine time with the brakes and some of the other components, the cost to duplicate would probably be about $227,000 - fully-functioning throughout.
Swedespeed: Knowing the amount in the budget you had, without saying that amount was, you blew well past that right? Nicholson: It took some considerable investment. I am so grateful that God has put an awesome team around me of truly innovative people with great ideas and then the people to be able to implement them and make it work. We have had a lot of fun doing it, for sure. Swedespeed: It sounds like Volvo wants to use it as an asset for other shows, so maybe people won't get to just see it at L.A.? Nicholson: Yeah, I hope it is able to tour around the country quite a bit. It sounds like it will hopefully be here for a while unless Volvo wants something else. Media response has been awesome. The public's response has been awesome. It has really been enjoyable giving people tours of the car and also standing back and just watching them pick up on the different elements. Is that really where the exhaust exits? How many pistons is that caliper? How does this twin turbo system work? Swedespeed: Did you say the final piston count for those front calipers? Nicholson: The front calipers are 14 piston. You can kind of see it as three calipers in one - two 6-piston calipers and one 2-piston caliper. The way that we made, not all fourteen pistons hit at one time. We did the math as far as length and orifice sizing, metering the brake fluid as it flows through the caliper, to make it so that the driver can truly modulate the brakes. The brakes aren’t just “on and off” as with that much surface area, on that much rotor, with that much clamping pressure, one might assume. Swedespeed: Well it definitely sounds like you and your team put a lot of thought into the car, but I think you went well beyond that with the amount of engineering that went into this. I'm sure you have to be very happy with this. Nicholson: Yes. I am, and I think all three of the C30 builders are. When we learned that three cars were going to be done and by whom, my fear was, are we were all going to have the same car, just in a different color. It’s got a body kit. It’s got brakes. It’s got exhaust. Whatever. But no, I am really pleased at how different each of the cars are - three different themes, three very different flavors and it is fun to see people respond to the different cars. For some people, the Heico car is their thing. It’s all wheel drive also. There’s the paint theme and everything else. Other people respond to the ipd car and say, wow look at the electronics, the body kit and everything. Others respond to ours in a different way. It is fun to see that. I think Volvo did a great job of really bringing three very diverse concepts together. Swedespeed: It is certainly a very attention-grabbing way of bringing a car to market. Nicholson: For sure. A lot of people are coming up and asking if this is going to be in the US. Is it going to be available? How much does it cost? And this being a trade show, it’s not like the public in general is wandering through here. We are in the L.A. area, so we will be with the car as much as we can for the L.A. Auto Show, but it will be interesting to see how the true public responds to the three concepts there.
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