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Location: Mt Riverview, NSW, Australia
Car: 1994, MkII, White
Tag: 12HOUR
Mileage: 22000 miles
Bought first MR2 (85 model) in Dayton OH USA in 1990 when posted there from
Australia to study. Needed to get to and from school rooly quickly!
Loved it so much, I exported it back to Australia.
Spent 9 months converting it to right hand drive (piece of wee wee using
standard RHD components).
In 1994, Toyota Australia promoted the release of the 94 model by entering
two cars in the James Hardy 12 hour race for GT production cars; held at
our famous (in Australia that is!) Mt Panorama circuit at Bathurst New South
Wales. One of the cars (driven by world sports car chanpion, Juan Manuel
Fangio, Australian Rally Champion Neal Bates, and Neal's brother and fellow
Bathurst expert, Rick) came 1st in class and 4th outright behind a Mazda
RX7SP and two Porsche 968CSs. The other MR2 came in 5th, one lap down on
the Fangio Bates car. Toyota named the stripped-down version of the car (no
radio, no airconditioning, supposedly just for having fun with, but saving
about $A20,000 ($US15k)) the "Bathurst".
After the race, I bought the car that came 5th and 2nd in Class from Toyota
Australia. Minus the roll cage and expensive suspension, but otherwise the
same as the day it finished the race.
Since then (about 15,000k ago) the synchro in third has gone, and first has
become a little notchy; but apart from those minor problems, the thing
has been as supurbly reliable as I have come to expect from Toyota's
imports. Not bad for a car tha was absolutely thrashed flat out for 12
hours on a race track against the world's best!
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Geoff Seeley ( geoff@mr2.com)