Bold endurance attempts from a bygone era.

Intro

I’ve been keen to study the audacious 1980s endurance record attempts by two of my favorite manufacturers for some time now. Those two I’m referring to are, of course, Mercedes and Subaru. Each of these company’s endurance efforts have been discussed on their own, but to my knowledge, neither have been closely compared in any meaningful way to each other.

Let’s travel back to 1983. Catalytic converters didn’t exist and Americans were still pumping leaded fuel into their tanks which is probably why I have a weak memory now in my 40s and probably also why these cars ran as well as they did at full whack for four days straight. Mercedes was on a blitz to prove that their billion-dollar-baby-Benz was as good on the track as it was on the road and to do so, they set out to make a 50,000km endurance goal, governed by the FIA and run under their rules at Nardo, a race track in Italy that looks like a giant ring from space; a perfect circle almost 8 miles long, designed for this exact thing- high speed running.

We’ll get into details later but many records have fallen at Nardo, and on this four day span in August 1983, Mercedes would set three FIA records, a 25,000km, a 25,000 mile and a 50,000km distance record. The gravity of this event, if you’re into this kind of thing, is that only one year earlier in (you guessed it) 1982, a Porsche 928s made a 24 hour record going only 1mph faster than Mercedes did for the entire 50,000kms. Amazing.

Laying more groundwork for this comparison, 6 years later, in 1989, a little manufacturer from Japan set out on achieving it’s own lofty goals, in this case a 100,000km endurance record by, you guessed it, Subaru, which was to take place in Arizona at a place called the Auto Test Center at Stanfield.

The track was owned by Nissan and in part, by Calsonic whom with Subaru had a business relationship. Stanfield is an oval, not a circle but it’s banked and long at almost 6 miles. Subaru achieved this record in what’s said to be 447 hours which is roughly 18 days of driving non-stop. Subaru used 24 drivers (!) to do this. (Mercedes used 18 drivers for half the distance) I’ve read some articles that suggested rain thwarted the Subaru effort which would explain why some dates published say that they raced for 21 days. My guess is that they threw away a few days on the front end due to the rain. Subaru did 138mph average for this entire time, pit stopping for reasons similar to Mercedes. Subaru used three Legacy, just as Mercedes used three 190e. The Legacy were equipped with the EJ20G engine and not the US EJ22. Here I am, already getting into the details.

Let’s compare.

The Subaru team was not holding back. They flew what appears to be 4 cars from Japan to SLC and then transported the cars from SLC to AZ where they set up an enormous base camp with spares, tents, porta-potties and more.

It looked like there were two semi-trucks full of spares and two tanker trucks on hand full of fuel. The team received formal briefings and looked very organized, strikingly similar to Mercedes years before. Both teams logged data extensively and used both high tech and low tech methods for the time.

Listening to the boxer rumble as the cars set off for days of flat out driving.

Mercedes used a camper van next to the track and an old W123 Wagon to hold electronic equipment to track progress and the car’s condition.

Mercedes engineer from the caravan, monitoring who knows what.

Equipment Considerations

To be fair, both manufacturers pushed the envelope a bit on what appear to be rules outlining self-sufficiency. The Mercedes was absolutely packed with spare parts, stored meticulously where the back seat should have been, radiators, headlights, you name it, all carried on board.

A back seat full of spares. No doubt, a tricky way to get around rules governing self-sufficiency

Subaru started with Legacy RS BC5 which might seem unfair starting with a lightweight special edition (they were RHD) but on the same vein, the 2.3-16 was, itself a special car. I’m going to call this a draw. Subaru used a different, aerodynamic grille which probably dropped the cd of the car which, in stock form is .33 according to my sleuthing. Subaru also used disk wheels while Mercedes used standard wheels. Credit to Mercedes here because their standard wheels were designed to be very aerodynamic. Mercedes 190e 16v carries a slightly better cd at .30.

Mercedes changed 5th gear to get higher speed which to me feels like a bit of a stretch. They also removed reverse which is mad but it gained them a half mph I think with less rotating mass. Along with that, I also read that the HVAC was either disabled or removed and the suspension was lowered for aerodynamics. Pretty smart. Both probably tested the limits of whatever FIA rules may have been in place for such an event.

The Race

During the race both companies enjoyed excellent reliability runs. Mercedes replaced tires in 5000 mile intervals for fronts, 10,000 mile intervals for the rears while Subaru did all 4 at 13,000 mile intervals. Both tracks seemed to be pretty easy on tires. Subaru employed 2 minute pit stops upon which drivers were changed. Mercedes opted for 5 minute stops. By the end of the 50,000km run, Mercedes had done 243 pit stops.

Services included removing bug screens from headlights and radiators for Mercedes, for Subaru similar. Both companies did oil changes. Mercedes claimed to have checked the valve adjustment in 5 minutes which seems wild. Subaru fueled from a cell in the trunk, as did Mercedes. Car colors were interesting. Subaru chose red, white and yellow for their three. A fourth silver car appears in this video and there was mention of a pace “rabbit” perhaps that was it. Mercedes chose green, white and red for their cars. The Mercedes were all painted in smoke-silver but they carried those colors on vinyl stickers on the rear windows and headlights.

I couldn’t find much controversy about Subaru’s run but Mercedes ran into a faulty distributor arm during their event. It was repaired with two-part epoxy successfully but not without scrutiny. You can read more about that detail here in this great write up from 1983’s Austrian Auto Revue Magazine . A nice detail about Subaru’s team and drivers was included in this Japanese Nostalgic Car article about Noriuki Koseki who was not only one of the endurance drivers but also the man considered to be the godfather of STI. The car is still on display at his son’s Subaru dealership Kit Service.

You need to do yourself a favor and watch both of these videos.

Panache Rating

It had to be done; I had to give each team a style rating and this might be the hardest bit of comparison to come. Mercedes won on the videography. The dark, moody lighting of their documentary, the car running at night, the sunrise at Nardo, the hot burning eclipse behind them, as well as the one underneath their tires, it was all very dramatic. The backside of the 2.3-16, covered in it’s own waste and thousands of miles of grit looked fantastic. There were a few bits in the Subaru video that I enjoyed a lot too. The man listening to the car with his hand cupped to his ear, we see this in hundreds of Japanese car videos to come. Iconic moment. Also, there was a nice montage of the Subaru running that I appreciated. Subaru really nailed it on the clothing, jackets to match each color car. The planning was impeccable.

Could the Mercedes have doubled it’s distance and survived? After all, Mercedes did hold154mph vs Subaru’s138mph…. highway stormer versus a rumbly rally car. We all knew that Subaru weren’t long-legged highway killers but I can be more confident wringing out my EJ20g Impreza for a few hours on a road trip knowing that it did that for 18 days straight. We should take a moment to imagine driving a 2.3-16 at redline for 4 days without stopping. How awesome that must have been. Or perhaps just as exciting, being a part of a multinational team in one of the first high-profile motorsport events for Subaru in the US. Marketing managers, engineers, accessory designers, all fighting for one goal. It’s a very cool thing to imagine.


















We come from France.

This Post is a previous work of mine originally posted on my @Pajeroshouse Instagram account.

I was recently introduced by my buddy Bill to a French motorsport concern named Faster. You can look 'em up on the internet. Most deep dive attempts into legacy motorsport groups in Europe come up short, maybe with an address or a one page website from 2002..Faster was better, their website shows deep involvement in motorsports at the highest level, including Dakar. While nothing pointed directly to work on the Pajero Evolution, they did mention a 25 year relationship with Mitsubishi and also their work on T2 development. I had to know more. 



I chose to go old school and I emailed them a short message to ask, expecting nothing. I enquired about their involvement specifically with the design of the Evo, thinking first that it would have been related to the aero.  A day went by and, unbelievably, my short email was answered thoughtfully with a long one from Mr. Florent Biard who has been working for Faster for 21 years. 



Mr. Biard was very excited to share a story about a collaboration on what became known as Mitsubishi ARMIE ( All Road Multilink Independent suspension for Evolution) and how he suspected that came to be. 

Mitsubishi had been keen to further develop raid trucks and in doing so, hired Mr. Dominique Copin, the founder of Faster, to produce the first independent suspension for 90s Mitsubishi Works Dakar trucks that we often call the MPR (Mitsubishi Pajero Rally) Prototypes, used in the T1 category This was aided by Ligier F1 Engineer Hervé Guilpin who was working for Citroen at the time. 

In the lower right you can see the early dual wishbone ARMIE suspension design by Faster


The suspension went racing in desert and won over and over, when the competition Pajeros went back to Japan, a short time passed and Mitsubishi released the independent suspension on the production Pajero Evo for the first time. Biard points out that the components on the production truck are built differently but the geometry is a direct derivative of the Faster design. 

I'm always deeply interested in collaborations of this type and they seemed more common in the 80s and 90s on this scale. You can imagine the complexity of this arrangement. The Pajero Evolution has always been mysterious, the same stories being regurgitated over and over...it's rare to get a first person look at development and I'm happy to share it here. 

"Remember that Paris Dakar started as a French Thing" - Florent Biard

Why not keep the momentum while we have some here and continue the discussion on how the Mitsubishi dynasty at Dakar started? Many have heard about SonAuto, or seen it on the the side of the early factory-backed Pajeros as they braved the desert. Before getting into too much detail some background- SonAuto was the (first) French Importer of Mitsubishi starting in the 1980s. It was headed by a chap named Ulrich Brehmer who understood the marketing value of competing in the Dakar. Brehmer had a chance meeting with two brothers (Bernard and Christian Maingret and seduced them into testing the Pajero at a nearby track near Lourdes. The three rented the track in the Summer of 1982 and during the test, covered 2500kms.  Ulrich knew that the brothers already had extensive Dakar reputation. Bernard having prepared Range Rovers and Mercedes for the event and Christian, a motorcycle preparateur with similar palmares. (SonAuto was also the Yamaha importer btw so this triple-alliance made perfect sense) 

The test was completed and after a visit from an emerging leader in rally and hotshoe driver, Andrew Cowan from Scotland, the three, Ulrich, Bernard and Andrew created the Ralliart (ACMS)/Mitsubishi, SBM (Societé Bernard Maingret), SonAuto team, which competed for the first time in 1983 with 4 Pajero in the T1 Category at Dakar. They  started work soon after to develop faster prototypes, set to race in 1985. 

This was the very first Pajero to compete at Dakar with Andrew Cowan behind the wheel. If you really squint your eyes and think about the big picture EVERYTHING with Mitsubishi and rally racing started somewhere around here.


Now, back to my new friend M.Biard who has helped put this together in relation to FASTER France. Faster started in 1984 and the relationship between the groups is now clear after a few more emails between us. Let’s rewind a little further.

It's 1983. And the triple alliance I mentioned above has been formed between Mitsubishi France (SonAuto), SBM (the preparation shop owner by Frenchman Maingret) and Mitsubishi sponsored Scottish rally driver, soon to be Ralliart Director (Andrew Cowan) Rally fans, especially Mitsubishi fans need to know and respect where Ralliart began and it was on that track in Lourdes, in a Pajero. 

After the first official factory team outing in 1983 Dakar, business was booming for Mitsubishi France. Pajero demand in France was high and the marketing was working so well that customers were calling with build requests for ‘84 Dakar. SBM and SonAuto didn't have the bandwidth to build privateer cars as they were focused on the factory contract.

The first Faster Built Customer Pajero for Nicole Maitrot and Monique Delannoy

Dominique Copin, who I mentioned earlier and Maurice Sartiaux were the two former F1 engineers, burned out from the high pressure of F1 and looking for something new, perhaps their own company. As fate would have it, the wife of one of their friends was interested in entering the 1984 Dakar with her friend, forming an exciting all-female team. This was the first project for Faster France, preparing the Pajero while winding down their work at Ligier. That team is in the photo above, the Pajero of Nicole Maitrot and Monique Delannoy!

Kalr Illey was head of sales at Son Auto. He had the idea to set up RALLIART customer racing and selling prepared privateer Pajeros.  The all-female team above had such an impressive result in 1984 that Son Auto drove to Faster for a meeting (only 20 miles away) and talks began. Faster became the builder for all of Ralliart's customer trucks until 2008!! Cowan retired his personal ACMS motorsports business name which in 1983, represented Mitsubishi Motorsports activities in Europe and then became head of newly named Ralliart and the rest, as they say, is history. 

What is even happening? (A post about the economy and the JDM car market)

The dollar has been incredibly strong against the Yen in recent months, giving American importers huge buying advantages but there are some strange trends emerging that will make the landscape much more difficult to understand for JDM car buyers and sellers.


The other day I was sent a post via Facebook Marketplace, which I’m always proud to say “I don’t use because I don’t have an account” Nonetheless, my lack of endorsement is not indicative of Marketplace’s efficacy, upon which we sold a Honda Element in only a few hours, and a family Tacoma in only a couple days. Back to the original point- someone sent me a Marketplace ad for a Mitsubishi Evo III with 69k kms on it, looking very fresh and original in it’s sparkling silver dress. The price attached to this car, which I will note also had the OEM lip intact, was a measly 19k. It was truly hard to believe because the last I had looked at the auctions in Japan, Evos 1,2 and 3 were selling in Japan for about that much and mostly in worse condition than this US titled example. How is this even possible? Evo 1,2,3 are more highly respected in Japan than here, where everyone wants the garish, angular look of the 5,6. More on that later though. How could this car be retailing here, with a price that represented basically free shipping, free import duties and much lower risk? It would even be inspectable in person, were one motivated.

I have a few theories about why JDM import sales in the US are declining in price and why inventory here is stacking as a result. The Evo III above, of course, is just one example but we’re seeing this with a lot of models, Subaru GC8 STI selling here in the ‘States for 15k in very nice shape, R32 GTR prices finally dropping. My examples are mostly of the Group -A type because that’s what I focus on, that’s what I’ve been tracking for 10 years.

Theory 1- (Age-my least developed theory) There’s something going on with buyer age. According to WRC fact book the biggest chunk of WRC fans are 25 to 44. To some of these people, these Group A cars are old and maybe not interesting. The young end of the spectrum was watching WRC post-group A and perhaps they’re gravitating towards newer models like the Toyota GR Yaris that more closely emulate the cars they grew up watching. Also related to age, perhaps some of the younger fans don’t have the affinity for classics because they got into rally when the legends of the time were dying, like Burns in 2005 or McRae in 2007. Everyone knows the GC8 because of McRae. There are few cars that came after Group A that are valued for their hero drivers (fight me) Another age related thing could be that there was simply other stuff to worry about around the time when the next generation could have been watching rally and dreaming about owning one of the roadgoing cars, who knows. Emerging generations also have less disposable income which could also simply explain the lack of interest in the last couple years.


From the 2023 WRC Factbook

Theory 2- (Domestic Scarcity) Suddenly the Japanese have realized that they’ve exported nearly all of their automotive history to other countries (ie: inventory in Japan is very low) And this is probably the most plausible explanation on it’s own. I have asked friends in Japan about this, my friend Ken, aka Captain Bradford who some of you may know answered emphatically: “Yes, this is a huge problem!” I’m seeing Subaru sell in Japan for more than they sell here which is amazing considering the great cost to get them here and register them. They could be going to Europe of course, likely the UK where well-loved imports have begun to rot out. Looking off-auction on classifieds like Goo.net we see very high prices on Galant VR-4, so high that it’s like an alternate universe because the Galant never got love here. One ad even said “the price is high, you have to ask” this, in a sea of 20+K USD equivalent Galants. In short, inventory here in the US is now high. Excited mid-Covid (let’s not kid, there’s no middle, we’re in this forever, but you know what I mean) buyers sought 13% + APR personal loans to finance their dream car and now, with inflation and an uncertain job market and actual (gasp) maintenance bills, they’re looking to unload on eBay and Marketplace. There’s a $14k STI RA on eBay that’s been sitting for months. Meanwhile in the UK this could be sold for 20k Sterling, easily. No one will bother with an export to make a couple thousand though… In short, car prices in Japan are higher than they are here, even for JDMs which will pinch US importers or force them to the bottom of the inventory barrel for cars that they’d never have considered before.

Theory 3- (Practicality) Right hand drive simply doesn’t work out for some people and they learn this the hard way. Also, maintenance is a challenge. Parts are becoming NLA (no longer available) at an alarming rate and if you’re not a mechanic, good service is hard to find. Some people probably didn’t completely assess the difficulty of owning a RHD, rare, imported car, nevermind maintaining one and at some point, the romance is over.

What’s next?- Something interesting will happen in two years. Japan’s offerings will converge (loosely) with US offerings. In the early 2000s we were introduced to the GD body Subaru WRX and STI, we also finally got the CT9A Evolution 8, despite it’s terrible bumpers and lack of AYC. When this happens there will be few desirable cars that people are interested in importing. If I had to project, I’d say that old, previously imported car values will climb at that point because everything will be even more rare than it is now. We might also see a generation who is less interested in cars like this. The current market is interesting because it envelops a strange period when we were all at home, going out of our minds on Bring A Trailer. That peak might be misleading our expectations. My feeling is that the ultra-rare models from this post economic bubble Japan period will always at least hold value and that the more ordinary cars will still be loved but perhaps not babied as collectors items. We’re not seeing Evo 5 and 6 hit the peaks that everyone expected many auctions are falling pretty flat. I expect the RS versions to be worth more long-term even though we’re not seeing it yet. Because you’ve read this far I’ll make some high value predictions in list form for the types of cars I’m optimistic about.

  • Evolution IV RS- Always bullish on this car. Low production, timeless and not showy.

  • Evolution V RS- another low production, super rare and captivating, better engine than above

  • Tommi Mak- no one should be surprised that these will always be the most valuable Mitsubishi of all time

  • Red, Manual Pajero Evo- again, low numbers. It’s not enough to just have a silver one now.

  • Subaru STI S201- mark my words this ugly S.O.B will have it’s day

  • Lancer Evo Wagon- in a million years this could be worth something but 5 years out is hard to predict

  • Galant VR-4 Evo or RS- it will take the right buyer but they’re out there. A low cost group-A entry

Cars that should have been valuable but, no, the US has no taste:

  • Subaru STI RA

  • Lancer Evo 1,2,3- don’t quite understand this. They’re more valuable than 4,5,6 in Japan but not here. Blame DSMers.

  • Mazda 323GTR- if you ever see one, let me know.

The M3 should be back in a month

There are so many projects I could have been doing while the shell was with Victor. Some cost money, others just time. I had hoped to focus on the labor-intensive pieces that required time in the shell’s absence.

Working on engine bits seems like doing things out of order but it’s probably, for me, it’s the most satisfying bit to do. I’d been resisting this temptation because I determined early-on that the car should be completed in phases, creating a rolling chassis first, then filling in the missing spaces. I got seduced, breaking my vow to not do engine work, by the throttle bodies, whose beautiful, individual chimneys that help create that S14 howl. After ordering the 48mm carbon plenum I had anchored myself to having the 46mm throttles bored to 48mm and along the way, convinced myself that it was a good idea to refinish the aluminum and steel hardware on the ITBs with dry ice blasting and zinc coating. Klevis at VAC will help me out with the porting but that initially left me with a lot of complication because it would be on me to handle the refinish. After talking to Klevis a few more times I learned that he can handle the whole process, much to my relief. This means I’ll be sending Klevis a pile of parts and pieces that he’ll process with a bunch of money and time to send me back something gleaming and special.

A few weeks ago I helped Greg from RKT Motorsports who is restoring Charlie Donnelly’s Evo 2 Group A clubman down in PA. I had some rare but impossible-to-ship parts to donate to his efforts and in return he offered blasting of the throttle bodies as a favor. Every hour is precious.

Other things that need to be done, building a set of doors that function from several damaged doors, locating a body shop after losing my friend Joe’s shop to a fire two weeks ago, trying to figure out how to coordinate the shell’s eminent return with seam sealing and painting so it doesn’t rust, aligning the money to meet the schedule.

The long tail of a project: M3

The blog trails the project by almost two years (!) M3 Construction begins March 2021

Last we talked about the M3 I left the reader standing in a parking lot, 10pm on a March night. It was about 30f and we were waiting for what turned out to be a large Eastern European man in an even larger American pickup truck pulling a long, enclosed trailer.

After a few short phone calls we were lined up for the meet. I had my trailer. I was in my work parking lot because I was trying to make the driver’s life a little easier. There’s no place to turn around at my house and no room on our road to park so we chose this cold parking lot. I was missing a winch which would turn out to be a critical component to success.

The truck chugged in, a dualie diesel pickup with a 30ft trailer in-tow. Puffs of mist in the air from talking, hands shoved in pockets, it was a properly cold night. I was excited but the car even though I knew it wouldn’t be much to look at. He had to first unload a beautifully restored first-generation Bronco from the truck to access my car. The Bronco started easily, as one would expect. He carefully extracted the car and left it idling which was optimistic given our upcoming experience.

Like most sellers of things buyers buy there’s an asymmetric of knowledge and understanding between the buyer and seller. Usually the seller knows just a touch more and somehow that translates into profit, or more profit. This probably applies to almost all used car sales to ever happen. This new car of mine had M3 rear wheels (except steel) and M3 suspension but to get it rolling, the seller installed regular E30 front struts and spindles with 4 lug wheels. Ok, fine you say, no big deal. The problem we faced that night, in the parking lot, in the cold was that the seller didn’t consider using wrenches to fasten anything. There were two lug nuts on the floor of the trailer and several miscellaneous nuts from the control arms and tie rods rolling around with the lug nuts. As a result of this missing hardware, the tie rods had actually fallen out of the spindles and the wheels had turned 90 degrees out, inside the trailer, which was about 8” wider than the car on each side. It was also dark.

The next morning.

Luckily this man was hardened from years of dealing with shady sellers and optimistic, energetic buyers and he brought some good energy to the situation, helping me hold each wheel straight with every 4” roll backwards. They would flop out, hurting our hands, we’d lever them straight, roll a few more inches and repeat.

The car made it down the ramp of the enclosed trailer and was now sitting in the middle of the parking lot with a ramp jammed under the wheel, as if it were going to somehow roll away on it’s own. My new friend stood up straight to stretch his back and said, ok.. where is your winch?

Disappointment is sometimes easiest to digest by moving quickly back to the thing that brought you there in the first place. In this case I eagerly pulled the ramp from under the M3 and hooked it into my trailer and said “I didn’t think it would be too hard to push up” my man laughed. It couldn’t get worse. The Bronco idled away. He decided that we should back it onto my trailer from the parking lot and that made sense. Even if it didn’t make sense, I was so deeply in debt to this guy I would have agreed to anything. I actually don’t remember backing it on but I do remember using ratchet straps to walk it up the last bit, winching them inch by inch.



Once the car was up and strapped in, I stowed the original metal hood in the back of my 4runner and the accompanying carbon fiber hood, that stayed on the car. I gave him a tip and he asked me if he should wait. I think he was actually pretty satisfied that we pulled it all off. I thanked him and said no. He loaded the Bronco for a couple minutes and did a wide turn, disappearing from sight. My car was finally strapped down. (editor’s note: he later turned around and returned to check on me as I was driving away. How cool is that)

If the reader isn’t familiar with the hood latching strategy of an E30, it’s very unique and actually quite genius. The hood hinges at the front, not at the back. When it opens the nose pops forward and then pivots down, bowing to the onlookers, nosing down, then lifting vertically from the back. When you shut it, the windshield side of the hood is dropped onto two little guides and the the latch is at the front. The whole thing is captured deeply in the guides in the back, by the windshield. It’s all quite tidy. Oh, and it’s aided by a small hydraulic piston on the side with it’s own little hinge that makes it shut slowly and open easily. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, when I was in this parking lot, at now 11pm in 30ish-and-dropping temperatures I did not check that all of these beautiful components that aided in such a smooth and controlled hood shutting were all actually present.

It was officially late at night and with most things “car” or “meeting a person” I was tragically late to return home. I got there and simply parked the whole mess down by the barn “I’ll figure it out in the morning” There were lots of parts listed in my previous post stashed inside the shell, in bags and in boxes that would be investigated in the morning. As I went to bed I was pretty satisfied that it all worked out. These processes are long, from finding the shell, then getting the money together, to arranging transport, getting it home ; it was several months I think.

The next morning I unloaded the car after bolting the control arms in and re-affixing the tie rods. Wow it was much easier. I walked around it in the daylight, trying to assess the situation, build the project timeline in my head, trying not to stress. I unloaded the hood from the back of the 4Runner and brought it inside the barn. I went back out and looked again at the car. I went to pop the carbon hood to look at the empty engine bay except, one small issue, I could already see the empty engine bay! Apparently the nose of the hood was not bolted to the hinge mechanism and because the car was loaded backwards, the hood guides allowed the hood to slide forward and out of the guides, in this case due to the wind from the back of the car, thus making the hood into a giant carbon parachute with no ropes attached. O.M.G where was my hood? I did some mental mapping and realized I stopped at a light t just near work, then got on the highway. There was no traffic all the way home. (thankfully) The hood must have flown hundreds of feet, like a glorious carbon fiber kite because I did a recon run and it was nowhere to be seen. The only thing left to do was laugh.

What are you even talking about? THE AIXAM MEGA DESERT that's what.

A Small French Company Creates a Nearly Perfect Machine…

This week I stumbled upon a photo of a truck I’d never seen before. It was racing through the desert and looked familiar, I just couldn’t place it. After a quick search, I learned that the truck was called the Mega and it was built by a French company based in Aix-en-Provence. I suppose that’s where the Aix in Aixam comes from, I wonder what the AM is.. I couldn’t figure it out. Auto-Moteur? Back in the 80s Aixam started with a different name: Arola. Arola was happy to be making what they called “non-licensed” cars, transport solutions; small commuter vehicles powered by two stroke engines and later, small diesels. Arola’s mission was help people who didn’t have driver’s licenses get around France. Georges Blain, an emerging character in this story, was a parts supplier to Arola and offered to buy the company in around 1984. His offer was accepted and the name was changed to Aixam.

Blain had bigger ideas, and with the help of his friend, Philippe Colançon, an engineer at Aixam the time, (in present day, a Managing Director) went into absolute warp drive and dropped a new model called the MEGA Track. This was a complete departure from past projects, a new supercar powered by a Mercedes V12, 400hp, impressive styling that emerged seemingly out of nowhere. The car was super unique, hosting giant Alcon brakes (so big, in fact that they made the Guinness Book) air suspension and Pirelli test tires from the Rambo Lambo. The Mega track had lots of suspension droop, something totally unique for an exotic looking car, and could be raised and lowered from the cabin. The company produced 6 in total. A Russian dude bought two, two remain in the factory showroom, who knows where the others are, I didn’t put much time into it. The car was not a commercial hit with only 6 sold. Aixam probably lost money on the project but they proved to be able to create a pretty darn good looking car and definitely the first of it’s type. Imagine a supercar on modest truck tires that you could drive over the desert. I’d drop a bunch of photos but honestly, you can just look it up and besides, this post isn’t about the Mega Track anyway, it’s about the Mega Desert.

What is even happening?

Going on deep internet dives for things that are twenty years or so old is a kink of mine. I love to find connections across projects and teams because, having been involved, I know that motorsports is a small world and big things don’t usually happen on their own. Ideas are born from partnerships and cooperation, iterating on successful ideas and hiring people who were part of those successful ventures. The Aixam Mega Desert is a great example of all of these things.

Georges Blain had been building an Andros Trophy car for professional ice racing and experiencing some great success with it throughout the 90s. Working off that success, Blain and Colançon started talking about and seriously considering Dakar in 1999. The conversation seemed to start with talk of a 2wd buggy like the popular and successful Schlesser Buggy that was finishing at the top of the results in Dakar. The two discussed what made the Schlesser successful and determined that it was in no small part due to the experience of Jean Louis Schlesser and that they, bringing a new buggy to the party probably wouldn’t experience quick success. Blain was intent on a very fast iterative process, “not 3-4 years” To achieve this, the two made some brilliant engineering maneuvers. First, they decided that there was no time to build a new body for this truck. To get around this, they took the Mega Andros Trophy car, cut it both lengthwise and in half and lengthened it, widened it. It’s incredible when you look at both.. it works well.

above, the Andros Trophy Car.

The team needed a drivetrain and they needed a drivetrain quickly! They knew that SBM, whom I’ve talked about and written about a lot, was a 4 hour drive directly north. SBM was, of course run by Bernard Maingret who was running the factory Ralliart Team from Pont-De-Vaux. Maingret had options in his contract with Mitsubishi that he could prepare other parts of Mitsubishi vehicles to keep his shop running in slow times, SBM and Mitsubishi probably envisioned engine building and customer car work as part of this agreement, although those were handled mostly by Faster France down the road. Blain approached Maingret to ask about preparing a driveline for the Mega. This presented a conflict that had to be taken up with Mitsubishi. The article I read (linked above) states that “Mitsubishi neither said yes, nor did they say no” to the idea of preparing another manufacturer with a Mitsubishi frame and drivetrain so the project continued with some risk that it could be cancelled at a moment’s notice.

The Mega team bought an engine, transmission (specification still unknown) and a prepared ladder frame from from SBM. The equipment was the final spec of SBM’s Pajero Evolution. (the 240hp is due to the 32mm restrictor used in 2000) After a test with the Mitsubishi, Blain wasn’t totally satisfied with the supplier’s suspension. What would they do? Time was very tight. Aixam decided that if one damper unit per wheel was good for their ice racing car, then two dampers must be good for desert racing, and after an initial test on the Mitsubishi dampers, the Mega Desert received 2 Andros Trophy Dampers per corner. Somehow, after all of this, the Mega was still a full 200kg lighter than the Pajero Evolution with the same power. This was likely due to the lightweight shell that Mitsubishi had not used due to having built the Pajero Evolution to T2 Specifications earlier on.

After less than a year of design and engineering, the team headed to Morocco for a test. They hired the winningest driver/rider in Dakar history to drive the car, Stephan Peterhansel. Peterhansel was incredibly pleased by the performance and the car was declared done somewhere around the new year of 2000. On to Dakar.

The 2000 Dakar is probably a whole post in itself but this particular year was the craziest iteration probably of all time. The original route was suspended due to a terrorist threat and the cars were all airlifted out of the dangerous area via several trips on a giant Antonov plane, like a Noah’s Ark service vehicle. They touched down in safe territory and the rally continued in what effectively became two sprint rallies.

The Antonov lifts off full of desert racers.

This airlift moved a total of 500 race and service vehicles. This alone is absolutely mind-blowing, to pull off this remarkably challenging logistical act in the middle of the desert on zero notice. Back to the race, the Schlesser Buggies are proving unstoppable. Whispers amongst teams circulate about the course being designed to favor the 2wd buggy, and of the team sandbagging, slowing down to not tip their hand and show the obvious advantage. The Mega team raced a consistent event, Mitsubishi could not hold the pace in the heavier Pajero Evo much to the disappointment of Ralliart France Team Manager Dominique Serieys who accused Mega of cheating to the point where Aixam were subject to a teardown after the event. No impropriety was found and Mega held onto 2nd place in their debut event, truly an amazing finish over a well-funded factory team that had been sweeping the results for years. Mega and Peterhansel beat Mitsubishi / JP Fontenay by about 17 minutes when the dust settled.

2000 would be the first and last event for the team. Aixam’s owner Blain retired, direction changed and Dakar was very expensive without a committed sponsor. It’s likely anyway that after such an impact that Mega would need a completely new car for 2001. Maybe everyone was depleted from the big push they put into 2000.


Thanks for tuning in. Here’s a video to close it out.



The History of Mitsubishi motorsports, Ralliart and how to translate a book with your phone

I bought another book on Yahoo Auctions Japan. It’s the third one from the same publisher, JAF. The book is called Rally Maker Series and they do a fantastic job naming the people involved in each project, describing the engineering process behind the cars and adding lots of layers to stories that are generally lost in time. Here’s the second effort I’ve put in. The first was about the Pajero. I’ll try to capture that at a later date.

The book starts in the early days of 2wd rallying first in Japan, then in the UK with Andrew Cowan. I might translate the early years at a later time but my interest is mostly in Group A, and how we got there so I started focusing on the time just before Group A, the time when Mitsubishi used the Lancer Turbo2000, a RWD car with a 2.0 liter 4g63 engine that had a weak-ass SOHC cylinder head but a respectably large turbo that made up for it’s lack of valves and visual symmetry.

Just look at that bad mofo. They took the standard lights off the car as well as the nose and instantly made it look 100 times better.

A few of you may have seen photos of this car with little context attached, obviously it's a really striking design, a Starion with the nose chopped off "crudely" as described by a lead engineer from Mitsubishi at the time. Research into a developing 4wd Group B competitor began after Mitsubishi Observed Audi's domination in the early 80s. Mr. Kumi Yamamoto from Mitsubishi's Okazaki Technical center was the lead man on the project, his challenge- how to develop and then to homologate a car quickly was entirely up to him and his team. This is perhaps the least talked about car in Mitsubishi's history and at the same time, the most critically important in how it held crucial technology and set the path for future project workflows that even seeped into the Dakar Prototypes at SBM. Development at the technical center started with a switchable dogbox that had a 2wd-4wd switch. Some Mitsubishi Enthusiasts might remember a W5m33 JDM box with a similar switch. The problem was the early cars, with their crude 4wd could not turn in well and the idea for this Starion was that drivers would switch to 2wd for tight turns. This proved too complicated for drivers and during the development, Yamamoto knew they needed a new plan. Where did they go?

Yamamoto used his UK connections and opened talks with UK farm equipment supplier Ferguson & Co. who had an interesting viscous coupling device used in farm implements, generally on lower power vehicles and certainly not on 400hp rally cars. The connection was made and Mitsubishi began collaborative testing on the units. These couplings went into the competition car and with some adaptation of Pajero parts, using Magnesium cases over Aluminum and lighter weight shafts they were able to reduce the transmission weight by 25kg. Things were looking good. The team was learning to iterate quickly and the foundational technologies for the Galant Vr-4 and later, the Evo were being developed on this Starion. The car was entered in 1984 RAC under what was a Prototype class, Group S. It suffered some suspension problems and for one reason or another didn't race again until the Malaysian Rally in 1985, again in the S class. The production cars never materialized but parts were actually produced. It sounds like there wasn't confidence in the economy to sell 200 and the writing may have been on the wall for Group B by that time.

I will leave you with this final tidbit. This book suggests the unique color of the car to be a reference to the "555 Tobacco color of the time" if only we knew what this meant, or what could have been. In fact, when the car raced it’s last event in China, the whole team did so with a 555 livery.

Here are a few more photos of the car. The drivetrain was a modified Pajero setup but with a VCU and a Magnesium case. The Transfer case had to be clearanced from above by a big bulge in the driveshaft tunnel. Drivers complained of burns during testing. The engine sported a 19c turbocharger that was a victim of it’s own spinny-ness early on, breaking itself to bits and cracking the manifold below. Technicians struggled to replace it during the rally due to the heat and it was improved upon during development with new materials.


Introduction Required

 It's been about a year and a half since I started this project and today was the first time I considered writing about it. Somehow, despite my best intentions, capturing the process on video as I have been doesn't feel as informative as I’d like it to be. It shows the “how” but not the story behind it, not the “why.” Anyway, this might be a better spot for it, even if no one reads this or future posts like it. In the end, when the car is done I can say, hey- I actually wrote about this process and while it was happening all this other stuff in my life was happening too circling around it. I do best when I have projects. They help snub and average the chaotic spikes from everything else. 

For about a year before I started on the M3, I had been thinking about selling my Lancer Evo II, a car I'd owned since 2004, almost 18 years at that point. I really liked the Evo but after competing in it for the third time at Mt Washington Hillclimb and putting a bunch of work and money into the car, my time in 2019 was nearly the same as in 2016! Everyone else got faster so I didn't place as high in the results. I started thinking that the old car had reached it’s peak of developent and that any further improvement would mean a full overhaul. I wasn't enthusiastic about that. I started talking to friends about selling it, posting it online here and there. At the time, I wasn't really sure what was next. I considered one of those Dytko Sport Protos which even now in November 2022 seems like it would have been a cool idea. For one, the car would have been done by now. Second, it would be a contender for overall wins at the right events. That option was being weighed against building an E30 M3, a car I had owned before in street trim and a car I was always nostalgic about. “The best M3”, the most winning sportscar in history maybe? Rally, hillclimb, DTM, JGTC, BTCC, you name it and it was winning. Financially it could be explained because a car like that, done right would always be worth money, especially if it started with a real M3 and wasn't a replica. “It was an investment!”

Once I decided on an M3, the next order of business was how to get started. I originally aimed at buying a prepared shell from Vink Motorsport, Mats Motorsport or Matter and building it slowly. That plan matured into negotiation with Ton Vink about preparing the whole car, and then to Mats over the same thing. They were both great to talk with. Vink was always wanting to talk on the phone, not email which was tricky, Mats wanted to do some maneuvering with my buying a whole car from him and then his parting it out, then selling him the title back. Neither wanted to deliver me only a shell. It was the whole car or nothing and quite frankly I couldn't afford to pay either of them to carry the project straight through as their build pace would have been much faster than my spend pace. For those two, selling only a shell made no sense because they subcontract the shell preparation and they would therefore not make enough money from the job to justify dealing with me. Matter would have prepared a shell for me for 40k Euro which I should have done. We questioned Matter’s fabrication skills despite their lengthy palmares in motorsports, we knew we could do better, despite the cost inevitably being the same in the end.  Both of those guys have customers lined up with blank checks to be signed. There’s little value in negotiating with a customer like me and I was at least aware of that so I never pushed. Engaging in a really big transaction with someone thousands of miles away is also not easy. Hiring anyone in Europe therefore felt a little stressful from the outset and a fun project shouldn’t start that way.

You're reading this, an abridged version, a compression of several months of planning and car searching, parts hunting and obsessing over different shells, books, magazines, photos online.. it was probably over a hundred hours of research. I’ve been logging my work hours in a journal. We can talk about that one later.

After I parked my hopes of having someone else do the most laborious part of the project for me, I started looking stateside for a shell or a car that needed work. After a couple months, my friend Nick found a shell on Facebook Marketplace, an 88 in Salmon Silver Metallic with 70k miles and a lot of parts. It wasn’t too far away (Ohio) and already had a roll cage. The car was built for BMW CCA and used once or twice then parked for 7 years, it’s parts being picked away and slowly sold for whatever reason. I talked to the seller and we settled on 27k for the engine-less rolling shell and an assortment of parts. My first M3 I bought for 10k in 1998. It was a running car with some dents but all original. Times had changed. 

If my memory serves, the shell came with: 

  • Circle track steering column (Ugh..)

  • US Spec Getrag 265/6 5 speed

  • Fenders, (front wings), one dented

  • Rear windscreen

  • Two tail lights, one cracked badly

  • Grilles, several, some broken

  • axles

  • Gas tank

  • Diffs online 4.75 short rear diff with uprated LSD (brand new w/Motorsport gears)

  • front subframe (stock)

  • Rear subframe (stock)

  • Rear trailing arms

  • original doors with the inner skins cut out

  • Original rear bumper cover and boat anchor reinforcement

  • original steel hood

  • carbon fiber hood

  • “Mark McMahan” roll cage (well constructed but confusingly engineered)

When the deal was done, a good load of parts were included but not many that I was actually interested in. My interest was in making as big a parts grab from seller as possible in hopes that I could recuperate money by selling them. I sold the gearbox to a guy with a 3.0 coupe, I sold the gas tank to an M3 owner, the subframes I kept as spares. I’ll have to modify them to the new spec but it’ll be worth the time later. It’s amazing all the things you don’t have when you don’t start with a complete car. Window trim, interior trim, seals, gaskets, blinker lenses, the list goes on. In late February 2021 I wired this guy the money and a week or so later he loaded the car, with all the spares stuffed inside, up on an enclosed two-car trailer driven by a transporter who I would soon meet in my dark work parking lot outside of Boston MA. Next up, the delivery.

The M3 sits in the dark parking lot after a huge effort in getting it out of the trailer.