Meet Prodrive: the garage for legendary racing cars

If your car has a problem, you pop it into the local garage and get it fixed. But if you own a championship-winning race car, it’s not that easy. While your local mechanic might be useful with a spanner, fettling a highly tuned, hugely expensive and intricate racing machine is in another league. That’s where Prodrive Legends comes in.

Set up at the end of last year, it’s the progeny of motorsport experts Prodrive, the engineering company behind some of racing’s biggest star cars. The ambition? To restore its race cars back to their original glory. And what a back catalogue of race cars that is. Over the last 35 years Prodrive has created some of the most iconic and important race and rally cars of all time and in several of them, Motul was the proud lubricating partner.

Such as Partrick Snijers’ BMW M3 E30 in which he won the 1988 Manx Rally. Or the Le Mans winning Ferrari 550 GT. Or how about the Subaru Impreza that carried Colin McRae and Richard Burns to WRC victories?

“Many of these cars are now appreciating classics with immense value to their passionate owners,” says Paul Howarth, head of motorsport operations. “With the formation of Prodrive Legends, owners can now bring the cars home to the same company – and even many of the same people – who originally designed and built them and took them to multiple wins.

“What’s more, we have all the original build data and also hold the rights to reproduce key parts of the cars, while sourcing genuine components that are notoriously hard to find doesn’t pose an issue thanks to the network of contacts we have established since the early 1980s.”

Prodrive Legends is currently rebuilding a 2004 Impreza WRC for a customer. It only works on official Prodrive cars. Its package includes a fixed price authentication service, engine rebuilds, servicing, race preparation and ground-up restorations.

Over the years, Prodrive has built more than 700 Subaru rally cars, including nearly 100 Impreza and Legacy Group As and 160 Impreza World Rally Cars. In the 1980s the company also built 40 BMW E30 M3s and, more recently, nearly 50 Aston Martin racing cars based on the DB9 and a further 180 on the previous generation Vantage. 

“If a client would like to own and compete with an original Colin McRae World Rally Championship car, we can advise on the purchase and rebuild it to precisely the specification that Colin raced that very car, using factory records and many of the same technicians,” adds Howarth. “That’s something very special for many owners who like to be reassured everything is exactly as it was in-period, when their car was driven to victory by one of the great heroes of motorsport.

“For those that wish to optimise the value of their car, as well as its performance, having Prodrive Legends authenticate and rebuild it ensures that it meets market expectations, where only the cars with the most impeccable provenance command the highest prices.”

www.prodrive.com

This week Prodrive launched another new service. The company has started listing ex-Prodrive cars there are currently for sale.  While Prodrive itself doesn’t sell the cars, it allows owners to show them on its website for free. Currently for sale is Petter Solberg’s Subaru Impreza that competed in six rounds of the 2007 WRC, finishing 2nd in Rally Portugal and 3rd in Greece. It’s being sold at Silverstone auctions on February 21 if you fancy making a bid. Also for sale is a pair of ex-works Aston Martin Rally GTs, two of only four ever made and based on the V8 Vantage.

Check it out here: https://www.prodrive.com/cars-for-sale/