Urban Legends _SARDMC8 MR2-They found it

[MIKEP]

The SARD MC8 Is the V8 Toyota MR2 You've Never Heard Of

Built for Le Mans in the 1990s, SARD made one MC8 road car. This is it.
One car that competed at Le Mans during this time was the SARD MC8-R. SARD, short for Sigma Advanced Racing Development, is a Japanese tuner and race team that was aligned with Toyota. The MC8-R was a heavily modified MR2 with a twin-turbo 4.0 liter V8 under the hood. It had 600 horsepower and looked the part, but in 1995 and 1996 it was up against some of the toughest competition Le Mans had ever seen.

The MC8-R didn't stand a chance against cars like the McLaren F1, 911 GT1, and Viper GTS-R. In 1995 it retired on lap 14, in 1996 it finished second to last. That's too bad, because it looked amazing.

What looked even cooler was the version SARD built for the road. Pictures of it were released when it was built in the 1990s, but then it disappeared into hiding.

However, while cruising YouTube today and discovering that an MR2 TRD2000 recently surfaced on Goo-net, I came across a video from 2015 of the SARD MC8. Apparently, after nearly 20 years hidden away, the SARD appeared in photos in Japan with a few light body modifications.

I always s though this thing was an urban legend but it looks like they found it

Heres a link to it https://youtu.be/3uL-JHzmeYA

[GDII]

https://m.facebook.com/1428243837434668 ... 711135573/

It's back in the wild.

[ClanFever]

How much budget does one need to replicate?

[4CylinderSpecial]

How much budget does one need to replicate?

Lotemoney. Body extension on both front and back. Plus who knows how much work to get the body panels matching

[ClanFever]

How much budget does one need to replicate?

Lotemoney. Body extension on both front and back. Plus who knows how much work to get the body panels matching

[GDII]

There have been a few more images surfacing from this car. It started life a REV1 T-Top in yellow as a development car to form the body shape and extension. Then it was built as a REV3 hard top with the front clam shell of the development car in black and white.

There appears to be a few iterations of the car. Originally it had fog lights, black OEM mirrors and stickers on the sides of the rear wing, side intakes and on the bonnet with SARD facing forwards. It also had black spokes on the wheels. Then at some point it got a few more stickers added and removed and then the mirrors turned to white ganador style but I think are an actual SARD unit and the wheels turned silver.

One really interesting thing I discovered tonight while looking at photos is that it runs JZA80 Supra front suspension but the flipped it to run the left on the right and the right on the left. The rear section of the Supra subframe has been cut and bolted to some welded in plates. I'm not quite sure how the front aluminium subframe was fixed to the car or the steering.
The rear suspension is also JZA80 but with a custom subframe to suit. I'm having trouble sighting the springs and dampers in the photos showing the rear suspension.
EDIT:IF you read the magazine article it does tell you this. Although I didn't at the the time.

Although the race cars used twin turbo this car was just an NA 1UZ-FE.

download_20190111_231215.jpg (50.23 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

download_20190111_231213.jpg (37.42 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

download_20190111_231207.png (277.92 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

download_20190111_231203.jpg (32.41 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

images (2).jpeg (38.78 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

ae20f193d34091a63a0778f1bf22cae5.png (717.94 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

mc8_lm_ni66_zpspcwlzhnb.jpg (109.22 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

mc8_lm_ni65_zpsvsdnimad.jpg (118.05 KiB) Viewed 2209 times

mc8_lm_ni71_zpsbvvvduv4.jpg (31.36 KiB) Viewed 2209 times