4.2BURNS

I rolled up on what I thought to be a riced out Mazda 323 w/ License plate 4wdturbo. Pretty cool plate I thought, but why on a 323? The 323 had a soup can exhaust and had what looked like factory 4WD lables on rear and side of car.

It was early in the morning and as I was looking the guys car over he threw me a rev.... OK race on. So, we make a left turn and as I straightened her out I herd the guy double clutch and launch on the roll. Being at about 4KRPM I just put my foot in it and held on.

I rolled out on the guy about 3-4 car lengths through the top of second. But , the amazing thing is that the little 323 hung with me at that distance until about the shift into 4th! WTF!

Anyway, he then followed me onto the FWY and that is exactly what he did follow my tail lights until I reached ludicrous speed an let off her.

I knew I had topend to roll away, but that little 323 was quick. Is there really a 4WD Mazda 323? It looked to be mid to late 80's.

S4BURNS

Jim Will

IIRC. Stock they were decently quick. Modified they can be real monsters. A guy in my area has one, he runs mid 12's with a big turbo, exhaust and a few other goodies..
Another car to watch out for, the early 90's Galant GSX, Same as an Eclipse GSX under the skin,

mirth

<center><img src="http://sturtevant.com/reed/323pics/mazda.jpg"></center><p>yeah, the late-eighties 323gtx was pretty hard core. 4wd, turbo; only 132hp or so stock, but lots of potential... many of them were stripped down and made into rally cars.<ul><li><a href="http://sturtevant.com/reed/323pics.htm">http://sturtevant.com/reed/323pics.htm</a</li></ul>

Al G not algae

There really is such a car and they were, at one time, used and very popular in rally races.

rally

I used to race one very successfully. Believe me 250hp is easily doable and reliable.

Justin T

No doubt those cars can be very quick, but Christ! Those things are as fugly as it gets.

Ira B

Now corrected as pointed out by Rally.

Mazda sold about 5,000 of these in the US around 1986. I bought one for my wife. Stock it was pretty tame. It had a 1.6L DOHC 4 with a small turbo that produced about 130 HP stock. Mazda produced and sold these cars so that it could run them in rallies that required sales of at least 5,000 to run in the stock class. I believe it won the Pike's Peak Hill Climb in its class in its first year.

One of the Millens (Rod I think) raced these things and sold hop up parts. Last time I checked, which was years ago, you could get a bit over 200 HP from these things without too much internal engine work. While this is not overwhelming HP, the cars weighed significantly less than 3,000 lbs., so power to weight ratio was not bad.

Just for the record, this was not the same engine as used in the Mazda MX-6, 626 and first gen Ford Probe turbos.

D.Ross

or a Galant Vr4... a guy around here has one... supposedly really rare.

Vtec_Killer

VERY RARE....4G63 motor!!!!

D.Ross

Supposedly they have tried 5 or so replacements, none of which would work... and now they are trying to source one from Japan.

Any links/info? What are the details of that motor? It's a 2.0 right?