671HP Home-Built 323

Building a drag car with no set deadline and no track to race it at sounds like a motivation draining scenario set up to fail but for South Australia’s Mark Tischendorf it has proven to be the exact opposite.

Mark purchased the miniature Mazda about eight years ago as a stock 323 that he intended to daily drive but as you can see, that isn’t exactly how the story goes.

After about a year general wear and tear began to get the best of it so the decision was made to wheel it into a mate’s garage and replace the diff, a decision that  snowballed into the wild Wankeled weapon you see here.

Running a 671hp 13B, a Liberty clutchless 5-speed and a ladder bar rear-end complete with a floating 9-inch diff, this is certainly no daily and judging by the few runs it has had down the strip, it should be an absolute weapon when sorted.

This isn’t the sort of thing to come together overnight and over the seven or so years it took to build this beast, Mark’s mind changed multiple times.

Suspension components, electronics and turbos were traded multiple times as the plans for this Mazda continued to escalate into insanity.

As many of you are probably aware, Adelaide International Raceway was recently re-opened and so Mark decided it was time for the mighty Mazda to finally see daylight.

So far the car is yet to run the quarter mile but after reeling off a 7.01@133mph over 1000ft, it certainly got our attention!

Mark tells us that although this run was impressive, the 13B was only copping 22psi of the 33psi it had been prepared for and that “there’s a bit more in it.”

For the full story behind how this daily driver snowballed into a strip scorcher pick up issue 177 of Zoom magazine, on sale now at your local newsagency.