Historical Footage: Mazda’s Group B RX-7 – It Might Not Be The Fastest, But It Was Certainly The Loudest!

Group B Rally racing conjures up images of Lancias battling Audis, Ford RS200s flying through narrow streets, airborne Opel Mantas and all sorts of crazy, borderline unhinged designs. It was pretty much anything goes, and manufacturers did just about everything possible to gain the upper hand. Lightweight bodies that were barely production? Turbochargers and superchargers, sometimes on the same engine? All-wheel-drive? Check, check, and check. Even to this day Group B is considered one of the most exciting times in any motorsports genre ever, and in it’s heyday it was more popular worldwide than Formula One. It was big enough that Ferrari was going to join the ranks…if that doesn’t speak volumes, nothing does.

Mazda even played along too, with their RX-7, and while it was already at a disadvantage against the four-wheel-drive crowd, it did have one neat feature that the audience was sure to love: a tachometer that swung around to 12,000 RPM and an engine fully capable of hitting that number. The worked-over 13B rotary was good for 300 horsepower at 8500 RPM, and when thrown into a race car that weighed around 2100 pounds, fun was had. Unlike other manufacturers, Mazda didn’t have to produce homologation models; instead, they were sort of grandfathered in since the RX-7 had been homologated for Group 1, Group 2 and Group 4 already. They were the underdog on the stages, but you could hear that rotary bark for miles!

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