SARD MC8: It's the V8-Powered Toyota MR2 You've Never Heard Of (15 Photos)

This is a bittersweet story about a small machine that faced giants and lost, but remained a hero.





Rule "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday!" always works properly, forcing automakers again and again invest in racing programs. Sometimes to get out racing car at the start is required to produce a certain amount civilian vehicles, the so-called homologation batch. In this way motorsport officials are trying to limit the imagination of designers ... Usually, for homologation, it is necessary to produce somewhere around 200 cars, but there are also exceptions...



Toyota Corporation exhibited racing cars in the most prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans since the 1980s but in the mid 90s due to the crisis, the category of prototypes was abolished, and attention fans and automakers has shifted to a more "democratic" class GT1. The democratic class can be called very conditionally, since such serious cars as the Ferrari F40 LM and McLaren F1. Toyota decided to take a breather from Le Mans and actually interrupted their racing program, limited to supporting the Japanese SARD (Sigma Advanced Racing Development) teams.





The SARD team, in addition to the expected Toyota Supra LM coupe, taking advantage of a loophole in the rules, prepared an unknown prototype. According to the rules, racing cars had to have road analogues, those same homologation cars, but the joke is that they don’t their number was specified. Apparently, automakers are so covert thus made it possible to put on the start the most crazy prototype (of course, within the framework of the regulations), releasing it into civilian circulation at least one similar car. Top GT1 cars actually turned into prototypes!



Based on the mid-engined Toyota MR2, the SARD team assembled the Le Mans prototype. The base of the compact car was stretched by almost half a meter, which, in addition to increased stability allowed the use of a 4-liter engine 1UZ-FE V8 from the prestigious Lexus LS400 and Toyota Aristo, pumped with with the help of two turbines up to a solid 600 horsepower! In addition to increasing length, the car was expanded and lowered - the original MR2 is guessed in appearance is very conditional. Interestingly, SARD built a unique tubular frame at the rear of the machine, leaving the front part more untouched, and Porsche specialists have applied a similar technology when building their hugely successful 911 GT1. Peeped?!



The car was ready for Le Mans 1995, then it was released and the only civilian version of the car. The SARD team has accomplished a huge work, so Toyota allowed the car to be called the SARD MC8. As if and not Toyota ... Doubts about the success of this enterprise, apparently, were large. Unfortunately, doubts were justified. In Le Mans 1995 qualifying of the year, the SARD MC8-R finished 31st overall and 22nd in its class. AT race after 14 laps refused clutch - retirement. In 1996 the updated car was able to finish, but in 24th place overall standings and 15th in its class - it was the penultimate car from reached the finish line. In 1997, the failure was simply epic - the crew did not passed the qualification. This is a fiasco, bro! A bitter story about a little a machine that challenged the giants...



The civilian version was devoid of turbines



The civilian version of SARD MC8 disappeared from the information space in 1997 when the racing SARD MC8-R retired. Today the car is in Japan, the owner is some kind of exotic lover transport brought a unique example of motorsport art to full order. One racing SARD MC8-R model of 1997 has also been preserved and, characteristically, it is also in a private collection in Japan. Automobile the flesh of the flesh is Japanese, so in the "Land of the Rising Sun" he the best place!



I would like to express my gratitude to the journalists of the Speedhunters portal for a great photoshoot of the car. Previously, there were three on the entire Internet photos of dubious quality, and now the buzz!