I wonder how many of you are old enough to remember Group B rallying and the Mazda RX-7 pictured above?
Mazda Rally Team Europe, based in Belgium, first entered a RX-7 in the World Rally Championship in 1983. The car evolved over the following years and the rear wheel drive Group B RX-7 shown above, scored 3rd and 6th placed on the tough Acropolis Rally in 1985. However by this time Audi, Peugeot and Lancia were dominating in four wheel drive rally cars.
Mazda focused their efforts on the new Mazda 323 Turbo 4wd the following year, taking three class WRC victories before withdrawing from the sport in 1990
-Andy Blackmore
Image: Mazda
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more rotary motorsport history coming soon.....
oh wow, group B rally was my favorite. I still think that the Audi Quattro Sport is one of the best sounding cars.
Any chance of an article on the 4wd RX 7 rally cars that Rod Millen was involved with?
There is a rumour that he still has a few of his early rotaries (including his RX 3) floating around, possibly back home in NZ.
Gotta love the killer B's. Didn't know about this one 'til now! All kinds of awesome.
Boyd: 4wd RX7??? :O :O :O :O
must
find
out
more!
.
It's too bad they had to can Group B, they were the wildest of the wild... imagine if it had stayed around just one year longer, we'd have seen the Ferrari F40, Porsche 959 and something similar to a Jaguar XJ220 going head-to-head in Group B racing! madness!
Boyd - I think I have an image of Rod driving Pikes Peaks in an RX7, but with no info. I'll see what I can find
Google "4wd rx-7" and you'll find all sorts of fun info...
any chance of doing a group b/rally month feature?
Yup, Rod raced the 4wd at Pikes Peak and in a hill climb back here (Ashley Forest in Canterbury, New Zealand - I remember watching it on TV). I beleive it was developed as a Group B car for rallying in America and he wanted to take it further but the europeans (unforgivably) we happy with 2wd and so it wasn't followed up. There is an original Group B (2wd) Rx7 in NZ that I have found on the net a few times and seen at classic rallies.
Rod Millen Motorsport produced a few RX7's.
One was a N/A 13B 4wd car which won the Ashley Forrest Rallysprint.
Another is a 20B 3rotor 4WD car which was used at Pikes Peak. It currently resides in NZ.
Finally he rallied a 4WD SA22C/FB RX7 in the U.S.A which also had a N/A 13B.
The Grp B 2wd car I belive is that of Bert Murray and is the Ex Neil Allport car.