Watch This: One Mazda 787 Prototype Keeps an Interesting Secret

The Mazda 787B might not have been the quickest prototype to take part within the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans. In reality, it actually wasn’t, with a qualifying time 12 seconds slower than that of the pole Sauber-Mercedes C11. But you don’t win Le Mans on velocity alone, or generally even velocity in any respect. Reliability and effectivity are king. That’s how Mazda grew to become the primary Japanese producer to win the occasion, and possibly the one one that can ever do it utilizing rotary energy alone. Of course, it helped that the automotive seemed beautiful too, with its argyle green-and-orange livery.

Mazda introduced a number of of its Group C prototypes to IMSA’s Long Beach Grand Prix final May, and journalist Marshall Pruett has posted a really fascinating video about one of many 787Bs readily available.

It’s the 787 with the white-and-blue company Mazda livery that’s of curiosity right here. Mo Murray, Mazda Motorsports director, tells Pruett within the video that this automotive raced within the 1990 and ’91 Le Mans occasion, and completed eighth within the latter. Note that it’s not the 787B — that revision first appeared in ’91, and it was the No. 55 “B” chassis that gained the race. As Murray researched Mazda’s assortment and found in a guide written by Pierre Dieudonné — one of many drivers of that No. 56 automotive — the white-and-blue 787 initially wore these iconic colours, too.

Chips on the wing and radiator reveal the No. 56’s authentic paint job. It’s the exact same orange that bore Charge and Renown sponsorship on the profitable 787B, in addition to earlier iterations, just like the 767. Murray tells us that the Charge/Renown livery moved to the newer 787B in ’91, leaving the older automotive to be repainted in Mazda’s colours.

These weren’t the one seems for Mazda’s prototype; the 787B additionally ran within the green-and-white colours of ɛ̃fini, Mazda’s short-lived, pseudo-luxury model unique to the Japanese market, for just a few races in Japan in ’91. It’s arduous to discover a sourceable picture of that machine, however as at all times, Racing Sports Cars has us coated.

Motorsports followers know that livery modifications are routine, however as time passes — notably since occasions within the pre-internet world — documenting this stuff turns into tougher and tougher.

For instance, Nissan solely ever constructed one R390 GT1 highway automotive — a blue automotive that is still within the automaker’s assortment in Japan, with a long-tail physique. However, when the R390 homologation mannequin was first in-built 1997, it was purple, with a very completely different rear-end design.

It would possibly seem to be there are two completely different R390s on the market, however the purple one hasn’t been photographed because the blue one appeared. They’re the identical chassis. Another secret: the R390’s greenhouse is visibly much like that of the Jaguar XJR-15, as a result of Tom Walkinshaw Racing was contracted to construct each and utilized a few of the similar tooling.

Not that we’d suggest it (or say we did in a court docket of regulation), however in the event you managed to infiltrate Nissan’s headquarters and chip on the physique of the blue R390 highway automotive with a knife, chances are high you’d discover a completely different hue beneath, identical to on the No. 56 Mazda 787.