New Zealand’s Mad Mike Whiddett is among the coolest dudes in motorsport, and he’s obsessed with making loud Mazda rotary engines and ripping smoke from his tires. For over a decade he’s been building wilder and wilder cars, topping his own builds with every new release. He thought he had peaked when he unveiled the #Nimbul Lamborghini drift car at Goodwood in 2019, but on the flight home from that event, he dreamed up the five-rotor 787D racer. It took four years to get from that first drawing to today, but it runs. And it runs well!
This car pays homage to the iconic 787B and Mazda’s lone 1991 Le Mans 24 victory, it actually shares nothing with that race car. This is actually a front-engine custom drift car with nearly completely one-off components for everything from the driveline and suspension to the body and chassis. This is all one-off wildness that only Whiddett could pull off. The chassis and center section of the body are largely identical to that of Mad Mike’s FD RX7-based four-rotor Pandem-kitted Madbull, but with 787B-aping nose cone and rear aero.
The official unveil of the car went down this week at Hampton Downs south of Auckland, New Zealand during his own Mad Mike Summer Bash event. After pulling the sheets off the car, which somehow made it through the full build process without so much as a leak, the gathered crowd was shocked that Mike was more than happy to fire it up and rev for a few minutes. It isn’t yet ready to drive under its own power, but it definitely has a running and revving engine under that front clamshell. Each rotor displaces 654ccs, meaning this is a massive 3.3-liter rotary. Whiddett expects the car will produce at least 650 horsepower when it’s finally hooked up to a dynamometer.
The team expects the 787D (the D stands for drift) to make its debut at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed next summer, and hopes that the car will make demo runs at Formula One events before maybe competing in some drift events. Wherever it ends up, if you’re there, bring ear protection.