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Video: Listen to a crazy Mazda RX-7 Group B car rev to 10,000rpm

18th February 2020
Laura Thomson

This is possibly the most conspicuous car on the circuit, but we’re guessing the driver likes it that way. For a Mazda RX-7 Evo Group B Works is hardly something that can go unnoticed, especially with its growling 300 horsepower Wankel 13B rotary engine.

Mazda’s little-known Group B car dates from the mid-1980s, when the manufacturer’s European rally team entered a number into various events, with a best podium finish in the 1985 Acropolis Rally.

Based on the first-generation RX-7 FB series (released in 1978), it is powered by that naturally aspirated 13B twin-rotor engine, which makes a huge 300hp at 8,500 rpm and 270Nm of torque at 7,500 rpm, revving all the way to a huge 10,000rpm.

This engine was fed by MRT-modified Weber 51A carburettors, which fed fuel directly into the rotor housing, while power was sent to the rear wheels (unusual at the time) via a five-speed manual gearbox.

This example is in a subtler spec than it would have been in period, with the full rack of rally lights removed, but still, it’s damned cool. Check it out in action during a track day at Circuito Tazio Nuvolari in Italy a couple of years ago, making every other car there look, and sound, positively boring.

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