Mystery Solved
I’m sure you all remember the case of the mystery car from my blog post last week. It seems there are a lot of you very keen to find out what it actually is and it even had the likes of Martin Haven and the guys at Radio Le Mans scratching their heads. Well, wonder no more. The case has been solved and the Car Identified. I would have revealed all earlier, but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances which I needed to resolve, I didn’t get round to writing this.
After writing my post last week, I got a huge response. Mostly from people trying to guess what it was. However some people did come forward with some useful snippets of information which I used to did a little deeper. With information ranging from someone who thought they spotted it in a race teams truck, to people who had seen it at a track day. Also a few more photos were bought to mine and Graeme’s attention. Working on a few leads, emails were sent out to various people in the hope that I could get a definitive answer.
Someone else had spotted the car too.
Having spent hours searching and digging, I had found out who had built the car, but little information was given on their website. So an email was also sent to them. On Wednesday, I received a number of emails back. A couple saying they didn’t know anything about the car but two were of great help. The company I had found, Mark Bailey Racing, did indeed the build the car and managed to give me some information about it. They also told me who they thought was the current owner. The other email was received from the trackday organisers of events which this car had been spotted at. They did know the owner and had forwarded on the email I had sent them along with a link to my blog.
The owner had got in touch not long after with the information we are all desperate to find out. So here it is, in the words of current owner Paul Spencer:
‘I can solve the mystery for you as I own the car. It’s a unique car built in 2000 using Schuppan 962 bodywork and a bespoke chassis designed especially for it. Well done those of you who mentioned 965/962. It’s powered by a Nascar spec short stroke Chevy engine producing 670bhp and uses a Hewland 6 speed sequential. It had never really been used before I bought it 2 years ago and we’ve had to make a lot of changes to the suspension to make it track worthy. It’s coming together now and should end up as a really quick car. It’s as fast as the Group C cars from the 1980s and a bit of a monster to drive. I’m happy to go into more detail if anyone’s interested. I’ll take the car to a few RMA track days this year and may race it if I can find any suitable races to enter.’
The MBR 962 before it's current Gulf Livery
I have spoken to Paul via email as I was keen to find out more and see if he had any photos we could use but he is in New York at the moment and said he would contact me when he gets back. So hopefully, there will be more to come on this unique car.
A couple of good photos of the car in action at Spa Francorhamps can be found here.
