Rare Mazda racer and classic Porsches are your dream buys

Unlike last week’s classic racing special, these are not the sort of cars that you’re likely to be able to afford, unless you’re on a first-name basis with someone named Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg. 

Gooding & Company’s Amelia Island auction in March is your ticket into some truly rarefied air – we’re talking about some of the fastest race cars that money can buy. Quite a bit of it, as we may have mentioned.

Have you ever heard the quad-rotor engine of a Mazda Le Mans car being pushed to the limit? It’s one of life’s little joys.

The 767B comes from the late 1980s, when Mazda was pushing the rotary engine to its limits. It had already tried out a twin-rotor setup in the 717, 727C and 737C racers, both of which proved that Wankel engines could be as reliable as reciprocating-piston engines – at least in endurance races. The 757 brought three rotors to Le Mans, and the logical conclusion was to add a fourth for even more speed.

And so, with around 630bhp on tap from an engine that revved out to an eerily smooth 9,000rpm, Mazda hit on the formula that would bring them an outright win at Le Mans – the only time a rotary-powered car would do so.

Okay, so they did it with the 787B, which is the final, and perhaps best, iteration of Mazda’s rotary-powered endurance racer. That said, the 1991 Le Mans-winning 787B was really a final evolution of the 767, with a revamped engine of the same basic design as the 767 and a very similar mechanical setup elsewhere.

But let’s be honest – buying this car as a historical document to be stored away is tantamount to missing the point entirely. Just the sound this thing makes is reason enough for its eye-watering price. At full chat, it sounds like a cross between a cornered Lynx and a Jericho trumpet. All of a sudden, modern race cars seem a tiny bit tame.

The road-going Porsche 930 is feared, quite rightly, as a beastly, oversteery and turbo-laggy monster. So what would happen if you were to, say, put an even bigger, even laggier turbo on the three-litre flat six?

Well, about 600bhp, in the case of this particular 934/5, and throttle response that’s purely from the Wile E Coyote school of delayed explosions. Apparently, the way to drive one of these things quickly is to brake for a corner, then stomp on the accelerator before you’ve even started to turn. By the time you’re out the other side, it’ll be spooled up and ready to destroy the rear tyres, which is when you let off slightly and reapply the loud pedal gradually. Seems simple enough.

Well, quite a few race drivers managed it (again setting them apart from mere mortals), taking the 934/5 to victory in both sprint and endurance events across Europe and Australia. This 934/5 took the Australian Sports Car Championship in 1981, scoring more than twice as many points as the second-placed Lotus.

Not all race cars are made to do battle at the bleeding edge of car design. Racing, as many of you will already know, is a frightfully expensive business, especially at top echelons of motorsport. And it doesn’t always translate to more cars rolling off the showroom floor.

But what if you could build a race car, based on a road car, so the link to the production model is strong, and then sell the result? Genius. 

And so that’s what we have here – a turnkey racer, built by Porsche’s Special Vehicle Department, that’s quick enough to win the 24 Hours of Spa, the 24 Hours of Interlagos and the Suzuka 1000km. Not a class victory, mind you – outright.

Of course, class victories were on the cards for the RSR as well, at the Le Mans 24 Hour and 12 Hours of Sebring, thanks in no small part to a bored-out 3.8-litre version of Porsche’s air-cooled flat six, which was conservatively rated at 320bhp and rumoured to have around 375bhp. It was also light, at just 1215kg, which helped it accelerate from zero to 60 in 3.7 seconds and stop dead from 70mph in just over 45 metres.

It’s all potent stuff, to be sure, which made it the perfect car for privateer racing. It also makes the fate of this particular car a little strange. It’s never been raced. Ever. It only has 2,500 miles on the clock, none of which seem to have been done in anger. 

So please, have a heart. Take this Porsche to the track where it belongs.