Related Books
History of IMSA
Related Articles
The History of
the March GT
Prototypes
Kreepy Krauly
March 83G
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These days, it’s not often one can find an old racecar that’s been salted away in a barn on private land, let alone two!
Over the last twenty years, there has been such a burgeoning interest in Vintage/Historic Auto racing that it seems as if every old racecar ever made has been discovered, bought, dragged away to a restorer/race preparer and brought back to life. However, there are a few cars left still out there and it was my pleasure to discover these two March GTP cars, both with significant race histories, that were languishing “up North” quite recently.
They came to light because the owner, having owned them for somewhere over fifteen years, decided that he was going to move to sunnier climes and, rather than take the cars with him, advertised to sell them. He seems to have had few people interested in buying them but I, being a March GTP Aficianado, (See the article on the cars on the website archive), decided to fly up there and go take a look.
The owner and his wife, both charming people, happily collected me from the airport and drove me back to their house, behind which was a large garage where the two cars were stored. Opening pleasantries aside, the owner and his wife escorted me to the building and opened the shutter door.
There, in the gloom, sat the two cars, surrounded by spares. The one, (chassis number 84G-02), is Turbocharged Buick powered and had raced at Le Mans in 1984 where it recorded 222mph down the Mulsanne Straight before lunching it’s motor in the ninth hour of the race. It had been commissioned by Buick from March to do all the testing of the turbocharged Buick V6 that later on powered so many Indycars. This 3-liter version was reputed to have produced over a thousand horsepower!
The other March 84G, (number –04), was just as interesting. Powered by a Ryan-Falconer 366 cu. Inch Chevy on injection, it had been one of the “Blue Thunder” Team’s cars and was Randy Lanier’s personal mount, (Race # 56), with which he had won the 1984 IMSA Camel GT Championship. He won some five races outright and took two seconds.
There’s a lovely story about the Blue Thunder Marches. Other Marches suffered from using early versions of the Hewland DG300 gearbox and they broke regularly. I well remember Wayne Baker, who raced an 83G in 1984 telling me: “Thirteen starts and no finishes!” The Blue Thunder March’s Gearboxes seemed to live a charmed life and, after the year was through, it was discovered that this was because their engineers had thrown away reverse gear in the cars and made all the other gears just that little bit wider to take the torque that a beefy race-prepared 366 Chevy could put out. Of course, the rules state that it’s illegal to run a GTP car without a reverse gear, but it seems that no IMSA Tech, Guy ever checked there was one in the cars!
84G-02, the Buick powered March, is all together and just suffers a cracked windshield. The owner tells me that he last started her up in the early 1990s. So a good take apart and clean up, including brakes, wheel bearings etcetera is required before taking to the track.
84G-04, the Chevy powered March, needs the body, including the undertray, fitting but the suspension has been rebuilt recently, so it’s wheel bearings, brakes, gearbox and engine check before firing this one up.
There are lots of spare parts with the cars also.
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Site Contents © John Starkey 2005
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