An MX-5 That Shouldn’t 13B Overlooked

Picture the scene. You’re planning on building an MX-5 to go racing with, but have decided the stock engine just doesn’t cut it. You need an engine swap, but what to stick in the little Mazda? Why not a rotary? That seems like a solid option. Well, this is why that might not be the genius idea you expect.

For those of you who have seen 90’s JGTC (All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship) grids, you’ll know just how much variety there was when it came to the cars competing. The GT300 class in particular had a car for everyone’s taste competing. Although the slower of the two classes, the other being the faster GT500, GT300 still featured Silvias, MR2s, 911s, M3s and much more battling it out. During the 1997 and 1998 seasons however, there was one car that was arguably more impressive than anything else on the grid. That car was an NA MX-5.

An MX-5, impressive? Well, yes. This was not your average shoddily prepared track day MX-5, though. This MX-5 was built by Nogami Project, or NOPRO for short. NOPRO was, and still is, one of the top MX-5 specialists in Japan, and their GT300 MX-5 was built to showcase the various parts they produced. The theory being potential customers would see the parts they could buy being used in high-level motorsport, and would want those parts for their own cars. It’s the same logic that’s been used by manufacturers entering touring car championships pretty much forever. Compared to most of the cars it fought with, it doesn’t look particularly impressive from the exterior, aside from that rather wonderful rear wing. Internally though, this MX-5 was a true monster. Powered by a heavily modified 13B rotary engine producing around 300BHP, the NOPRO MX-5 was certainly distinctive.

Unfortunately, while this sounds like a recipe for a rather quick car, the MX-5 was plagued with technical faults and a general lack of pace. The first race the car entered was the 4th round of the championship in 1997, the Japan Special GT-Cup at Fuji Speedway, and things didn’t go particularly well. The rotary MX-5 was two seconds per lap off the pace of the other cars, and ended up having to retire due to engine problems. Attempt two was at the 6th round, held at Sportsland SUGO. Again, the car was forced to retire, this time due to issues with the oil cooler. This time round the pace was even worse, with the MX-5 5 seconds per lap down on its competitors. The next try for the MX-5 was at the following season’s opener at Suzuka. Guess what happened. Yep, another retirement, although this time the car overheated. At least it was varied in its issues. The final shot for the car was at the 1998 Japan Special GT-Cup, again at Fuji. This was it, this was the 13B MX-5’s time to shine. I don’t really need to say what happened, do I? On the positive side, the MX-5 was not the slowest car on track this time at least. After that, the NOPRO rotary MX-5 was done.

Despite seeming like a great idea, it turns out racing a rotary MX-5 doesn’t really work that well. It’s a shame really, since I love seeing teams racing cars that are a bit different, especially when the teams are fairly small and not factory backed. It takes a lot of courage to go for an unexpected option in that situation. While it was far from a success, I really am a large fan of this rather crap MX-5.

I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a #blogpost , I really enjoyed researching and writing about this bizarre Mazda.