English race car builder Lola, the company started by Eric Broadley, put together legendary race cars for Le Mans, Formula 1, and the Indianapolis 500 for more than five decades. The last car to bear the Lola name was the B12/80, a closed-cockpit Le Mans Prototype. Unfortunately, Lola folded in October 2012, though several teams race B12/80s raced through 2013. The last three of the eight B12 chassis ended up with Multimatic Motorsports, who prepared them for the Mazda Prototype-class entry in IMSA’s SportsCar Championship run by SpeedSource. With new IMSA class regulations for 2017, SpeedSource has now put all of those cars–the last Lolas ever built–up for sale.
The Mazda team attempted for two years to run a stock-block turbodiesel engine in the updated LMP2 chassis, but cooling troubles rendered that engine program ineffective, at best. While the engines could produce adequate horsepower, the necessary cooling never really could be packaged in the chassis. However, the revised version for 2016 used a detuned version of the turbocharged Mazda 2.0-liter four-cylinder that was previously used in Dyson Racing’s LMP1 Lola. That engine took the Mazda-powered Lola to its one and only podium at the Belle Isle Grand Prix in Detroit.
Because Mazda will be using the same 2.0-liter engines in their new RT-24 prototypes, SpeedSource appears to be selling them without engines. One could, theoretically, lease a 600-horsepower V8 from Gibson, who is supplying all LMP2 engines for 2017, and run one of these cars in the European Le Mans Series or Asian Le Mans Series. However, these cars were designed to accept LMP2 engines easily from Judd, Nissan, or Honda that would allow you to have a super-fun, 550-horsepower track toy.
You can find the listing on RaceCarsDirect.com right here.
Lola gave birth to the Ford GT40 programme with the Lola GT project. It was created as a proof of concept and then Henry’s mob hijacked the whole gig which led Eric Broadley to create one of the most beautiful racing cars of all time the Lola T70.
Amen to that.