Prospero,

Nice job on showing the Volvo's stuff in the performance area. I run in performance driving events (not "real" races) at SCCA's Thunderhill track in Willows CA. A 3 mile road course with great, obstacle free runoff areas and a smooth, wide track. The last time out a couple of BMWs (a 330 and a 528) were confused when a '95 Volvo 850 Turbo Sedan went by them. They just had no idea where the 850 fits on the performance spectrum. They stopped by after the session and wanted to know what mods I was running. The only thing (so far) is the strut brace and sport exhaust from ipd (well, I was also running Hoosier competition tires).

It's so much fun driving this thing - kind of a stealth vehicle, doing things no one expects out of a Volvo...

If you like performance driving check out NASA and SCCA. I don't know if other SCCA regions offer the Street School but it's $175 at Thunderhill (the best $175 I've ever spent). NASA is national also and they charge $149 for a day of "perfomance" driving - they call it a High Performance Driving Event. It's described as a driving school and they say most insurance companies will cover you for driving schools. Both offer instructors and group cars and drivers by performance capability and experience. You get at least 2 hours of on track time. The last NASA event I went to we had 6 hours available but I'm just not up to that much high speed driving. NASA is at the link below. SCCA is at http://www.scca.org/.