JAPANNESE GROUP S RALLY PROTOTYPES

Cheers,


Well, in my last post I had only 1 reply. Now let's see if there is anyone here who knows about what I'm talking about....
I'm looking for any kind of information or press articles about the following Group S rally prototypes :

- Mazda Group S - Built in 1987 by Mazda Euro Rally Team in Belgium.It used a 3-rotor ex-Le Mans
engine and a space frame chassis. 2 cars were built. They reportedly were sent
to Japan after the Euro Rally Team folded. This is definitly the most
odd looking and secret group S prototype ever built....

- Toyota MR2 Group S - Built in 1987 by TTE. It was kept secret until it appeared in public for the
first time in the early nineties. 2 cars were built , both using ex-IMSA GTP
engines.The only difference was the orientation of the engine in the chassis.
One of the cars ( the most well know, painted in black) resides at TTE (now
Toyota Motorsports - F1) in Germany.The other (painted white) resides at
one of the Toyota Museums.

If anyone here has contacts in Mazda or Toyota Europe, this would be a perfect opportunity to make these work. I bet that there isn't any information available about these cars anyway...
I would just like to know if the Mazda Gr.S cars still exist.


Best Regards.
NSMG

That is certainly very specific and specialist stuff - but there are Rally enthusiasts amongst us - and i wouldn't have thought Mazda would need to be overly secretive about old projects.
Fred Gallagher posts here from time to time - he would be as likely as anyone to know where to look for info.

Found this using Google.



ULTIMATE MR2 - Toyota`s Group 'S' Rally Car - A Hybrid cross between a GT4 & MR2 it had a Spaceframe chassis and a 3SGTE midmounted with 4WD, Rumours of 500+BHP, Only believed to be 2 whole cars in existence.

Nothing on the Mazda Group S Car though.

One of the Mazda certainly do still exist and it was recently on sale in Japan.

I think it was very recently featured on a Japanese magazine as well.

There is a good colour photo in the book that Toyota produced to celebrate the 1993 Championship.
"World Rally Champion - Toyota '94" JAF Publication. Rally Makes Series Vol.4

Intriguingly the car in the photograph has a small number 8 on its nose.

I only saw the car once, being tested at a rallycross circuit in Holland just over the border from Germany. It was early days and the thing never ran right. I think this may have been about April/May 1985 - I have a memory of reading the Auto Hebdo with the report of Bettega's Corsica accident there but if that was the case don't understand why I never saw the car again.

In May 1986 I was at Ove Andersson's house for dinner when we heard about Toivonen's accident. Somehow I knew immediately that there would be a strong reaction but Ove couldn't bear to think that 2 years worth of hard work would be scrapped overnight with the banning of Group S but that of course is what happened.