In fact, it is as good a racing car as I am bad with dry humour. It's no secret by now I'm a bit of a Mazda fan, and to me, the 787B is the single most influential and sensational of racing cars; it was the first ever Japanese car to ever win the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans race outright, and for 27 long years, was the only Japanese car to do so. It still remains to this day as the only non-conventional piston engine car to win the event, amidst a fairy tale like story of last chances, decades of effort and preparation, befuddling politics, and of course, utterly ridiculous luck that would make even the most imaginative of harem authors wince.
As a result of these highly unusual breakthroughs, Mazda fans will slap its instantly iconic, recogniseable from a mile away orange and green RENOWN (RIP) livery on any Mazda, from Demios, to Roadsters, to RX-8s. Mazda themselves won't stop hogging the number "55" in all their racing cars, both fictitious and real, and you can be as sure to find the word "Mazda" brochures of any Mazda car as the words "787B", "Rotary Engine", "pioneer", "Jinba-Ittai", "never stop challenging", and "1991 24 Hours of Le Mans". Rotary Engine fans, often mocked for the unreliability of their cars, need only point to the 787B and say, "they're reliable if you take care of them, bro!"
The 787B is so historically and culturally significant, that to this day, it's still being maintained, put on display at Mazda's Museum in Hiroshima (tours in English are entirely free, by the way), and brought out for demonstration runs in fan events as recently as 2019. Mazda as a company has always been largely defined by the Wankel Rotary Engine, and the "2616cc" R26B Naturally Aspirated 4 Rotor in the 787B is THE definitive, granddaddy of Wankel Rotary Engines, and so it should stand to reason as well that the 787B is simply THE definitive Mazda as a result, which is why I've chosen to review this car in celebration of Mazda's centennium this year.
No dialogue about the Wankel Rotary Engine will be complete without mentioning the sound it makes... and the abysmal low end torque... and the weak apex seals... the "devil's scratch marks" caused by said apex seals on the housings of the engine... and heating issues... and how it drinks oil with almost the same ferocious thirst as actual gasoline... and the incompletely burnt carbons churning out the exh- look, we'll get to those in due time, okay? The SOUND of this thing... is utterly ungodly. Being an engine that operates on an entirely different principle of internal combustion, it of course sounds like nothing else on the road or grid.
I could tell you how sharp, baleful, and impatient it sounds. I could describe to you how it sounds like a maniacal, cackling, benevolent god writhing in self pleasure at its own comically devious plots when simply idling at a standstill. I could describe to you how insanely loud it is, that even on most wide open racing tracks, the sheer dimensions of noise that erupt from that tiny little "2.6L" package would reverb and echo off what little structure there is on a racing track. I could speak metaphorically about how guzzling and angry it sounds, shrieking with a woeful vengeance as though it wants to rend the air itself asunder with each approach to its redline. And Volker Weidler, one of the three drivers that drove the #55 car to overall victory in 1991, will probably also tell you that it made him deaf in one ear. But honestly, why would I waste my words and your time, trying to describe something that every motorsport fan needs to hear at least once in their lives?
And that, right there, is one of the very many reasons why I will never bother with F1.
So, with all that said, securely put on your earplugs, make sure you're comfortably seated, fasten your racing harnesses, close your eyes, take a deep breath and utter a prayer, because I'm about to tell you that...
The Mazda 787B is a load of crap in Gran Turismo Sport.
I am never ever going to get back into the good graces of the folks at Mazda after this, am I...?
If you were expecting a Le Mans winning car to exhibit acrobat like agility and flexibility, with the eagerness of a kitten on catnip chasing after a laser pointer dot held by a drunkard, you'd be right... twenty years later. As a whole, Group C cars seem to me like they emphasise straight line stability and ease of driving above all else - which makes sense in a 24 hour endurance event split between just three drivers. As a result, the 787B handles like a freight train - it can and will go fast as all hell, but good luck getting it to stop and turn.
It should perhaps come as a surprise then, to learn that the 787B weighs in at only 830kg (1,830lbs), comes with carbon composite brakes, and enough frontal area to write this entire review on. If those figures aren't enough to shock your Category 2 wheel spats off, then perhaps the weight distribution figure will: despite it's rear mid engine layout, the 787B has a 49:51 front to rear weight split, according to Gran Turismo 6.
Despite the turn-in lethargy I feel every corner that is more befitting a derailed freight train than a prototype racing car, it's still difficult for me to believe the weight distribution figure, especially when you consider the 100 litre tank of fuel sits snug in the very safe, balance conscious, performance oriented space between the cockpit and the howling engine.
What's exactly is so heavy in the nose of the car, that weighs almost as much as the engine, the towering rear wing, the gearbox, the diff, the full 100 litres of fuel, entire lakes of coolant and oil a 700HP Rotary needs, and two radiators all combined?
One BIG BOI radiator, apparently:
Whatever the cause of the very odd nose heaviness of the 787B, it is excruciatingly unwilling in the turn-in of every corner. It's not exactly unable, per se, but it will really make you wrestle and wrangle it to get it to meet with the apex of every corner. And I really do mean to wrestle and wrangle, as there is no power steering in the 787B to help you twist any of the 300mm section front tyres to do your bidding. With the comically huge rear wing, long wheelbase, even larger 355mm section tyres in the rear, AND the suspension setup biased towards understeer, every corner entry really does feel like you have to put the Twin-Tube Carbon-Kevlar Monocoque chassis into a Crucifix Neck Crank to get it to turn, and it will flex, twist, and writhe in agony despite being lauded for its torsional rigidity back in the day - this is a near 30 year old car, after all.
But, you know, perhaps it's a good thing that the steering is so heavy, because how else would you know that your front wheels are planted to the ground? While the lack of power steering does make turning the car feel more like arm wrestling a bear, it's somehow just as uncommunicative and lacking in feedback as well. You wouldn't even guess the heft in the steering at speed just by looking at it, because not only does the front end look lacking in downforce, but the rear end of the car is absolutely STACKED with aero bits: A wing wide enough for an adult to comfortably sleep on is entirely overhung from the rear for the maximum see-saw effect to lift the front end up, supplemented by not one, but TWO Gurney Flaps, one on the wing and one at the edge of the main body.
Oddly enough, the car has shocking amounts of aerodynamic grip through the speedy twists and turns of Toukyo East and Kyotou Yamagiwa, despite looking like it shouldn't. I'm not sure what exactly is generating the downforce up front, but nonetheless, the car's personality does a complete 180 at these high speed sweepers, belying every expectation it has planted in you at lower speeds and exhibiting immediate neck snapping turn in, almost as though engaging 5th gear transforms this granddaddy Group C car into a modern LMP1 car (RIP that too).
Unfortunately, it just about seems to straddle the line between "relying on the black magic that is downforce and go in balls out at downright reckless speeds with only the blind faith that only more speed can make everything better", and "HOLY CRAP TURN TURN TURN I REGRET EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE WHY DID I LISTEN TO THIS DUMB ASIAN KID ON THE INTERNET WHO ISN'T EVEN BEING PAID TO WRITE REVIEWS?!" You never really know how the car will behave and react in these high speed corners every time after you chuck it in, as one moment, it will have shocking, unbelievable grip, and the next, it's understeering into a wall. Because of how quickly it switches between these two extremes with almost no communication, it's just a question of "which all are you hitting, the inside or the outside?" This ambiguity and snapping between extremes I theorise is due to the car having the downforce to carry itself through, but the tyres feel and sound so out of alignment that they can't even take advantage of all that weight pressing over them, causing them to let go immediately with no warning once they hit a completely arbitrary tipping point, and with how fast the misaligned tyres burn themselves as a result of all that slipping and scrubbing, good luck sussing out that tipping point each lap.
Yes yes, XSquare's whining about the default suspension setup again in a game he loathes but still religiously plays in spite of that yadda yadda I know I'm a hypocrite shut up we're here for a car review not a person review.
The alignment, spring rates, ride height... everything is wrong in the car, because Gran Turismo Sport slaps on a "one size fits all" setup onto all racing cars according to categories. I of course don't have the correct numbers, because I don't work for Mazda (yet......). But it doesn't take knowing what's right to know that this setup is wrong. For starters, it scrapes on the Mulsanne Straight, and you will very clearly hear the front inside tyre scrubbing and screaming more than the outside at every corner. This not only hurts the cornering speeds of the 787B greatly, but it also causes the tyres to burn at such a ridiculous rate that no two laps of Le Sarthe can be driven with the same braking points or lines... on Hard tyres... at 1x wear... on a track that has you on full throttle 85% of the time. You will be visibly limping with this car just on the second lap alone with tyre wear on. I have NEVER felt tyre wear this bad in my entire life!
As a result of this... very convenient suspension setup and stability inclined aero, the car understeers for days on end, from corner entry to exit. It also has the aforementioned lethargy in slowing down, requiring a markedly longer distance to come to a stop than its Group C peers, despite being the lightest car in Group 1 by quite some margin. The stability inclined setups do at least mean that you'll have a very easy and assured time putting down power though, especially because the NA engine will never surprise you, and will only give you exactly what you ask of it. It's just... sometimes, you'll be surprised at how much you've asked of the engine when it gives you exactly what you've asked for in a full, ten course meal of explosive power, seasoned with unhealthy amounts of understeer. This is not just the single most understeery MR racing car I've driven to date - it's the single most understeery MR car I've driven. Full stop. As previously mentioned, this is more a Rotary Powered freight train than a car.
Truly, the only good thing about the 787B is its engine, which defies every expectation and reputation to be something that's genuinely astounding. Rotary Engines, especially the ones without forced induction to patch up its woeful low end torque, have always been known to be peaky engines. But, because the 4 Rotor R26B has telescopic intake runners that varies intake length according to engine revs to achieve some type of witchcraft called resonance supercharging or something, the powerband on this Naturally Aspirated Rotary Engine is, quite simply, nothing short of gasp drawing. Peak power may be at 9,000rpm, but peak torque comes in at a middling 6,500, and you have even, precise, smooth, and immediate power all the way to about 9,500 before the engine completely dips off. Yes, those still look like astronomical figures, but for some perspective, that's almost half of the entire 8k rev range giving you useable power. Put your foot down at anywhere between 6 and 9.5k, and this thing will get up and go with an immediacy, urgency, and almost glee, as though it had been looking for an excuse to get angry all this while.
As a result of the uncharacteristic plateaus of torque spread out over long gearing typical of Group C cars, coupled with the car's astronomically high redline, you can do some truly ludicrous feats of shifting in this thing. For example, during this week's race at Spa, I lugged the car out of Bruxelles in 2nd, almost hitting redline going into No Name. I then braked for No Name, upshifted into 3rd, and powered out, and I believe that's the fastest way to drive through that complex. And if all that hasn't been enough praise for this engine, the 1991 Le Mans race proved that it is shockingly fuel efficient, as well, betraying yet another expectation of Rotary Engines.
(Not much of a photographer IRL, ngl...)
Of course, part of its fuel economy is allegedly due to the engine being detuned to 700HP and limited to 9,000rpm for the 1991 race. There are LOTS of articles that claim it's capable of 930HP and 10,500rpm, but I've yet to find a single instance where Mazda explicitly states those numbers. Though, making peak power right at redline does lend credence to that detuned theory. In Gran Turismo Sport, we get a puzzling, middle of nowhere 790HP and 10,000rpm redline, though it's worth noting that the 787B can be brought up to a whopping 941HP in the game - an arbitrary ceiling for non Hybrid Group 1 cars it would seem. Its astronomical redline does mean that it has a rather high top speed of 371km/h (230.5mph) drag limited with just its default gearbox if you do bring its power up.
Being a Group C car, all its power goes through an old school, proper five speed stick: H Pattern, three pedals, and all. The gearbox was a joint effort by Porsche and Mazda, and features a dog-leg shift pattern straight out of the insanely successful Porsche 956 of the eighties. Infuriatingly, Gran Turismo Sport uses the conventional shift pattern for the 787B in the game as opposed to the dog leg.
Group C cars are, puzzlingly, essentially right hand drive cars with the gear lever on the right as well. This means that you'll have to climb over the exposed gear linkages to get into the car. It's a really confounding layout, if the dog leg gearbox isn't enough to trip you up already. No one's still doing that "run into your car and start the engine on the grid" thing in 1991, are they? Nonetheless, Group C cars are among the very few racing cars in this game you can drive with a H Pattern Shifter, and certainly the only ones that feel even remotely modern with radial tyres, ABS, and such. I only WISH I had one for my Logitech G29 to make the engine truly sing.
In the cockpit of the car, you can see sticky notes stuck beside the tachometer, retained as they were 29 long years ago. Written with black markers, these give glimpses to various benchmarks for the drivers to hit in the fateful 1991 race. Being already so far down in power, the drivers of the #55 787B were told to drive each lap of the 24 Hour race flat out as though it were a sprint race... for all of the 362 laps the winning #55 car ended up doing of the then recently altered la Sarthe.
The two real time digital readouts next to the tachometer gives readings of the instantaneous fuel economy in km/ℓ, and the fuel remaining in ℓ. If the instant fuel economy readout is to be believed, 9,000rpm at full throttle would give 1.80km/ℓ, which is close to the 1.85km/ℓ the sticky notes denote is the minimum fuel economy in order to achieve the target of 7ℓ a lap. The last digit in the decimal place doesn't work in the game, however. Being limited to 9,000rpm also limits the 787B to a top speed of a paltry 340km/h, which the car will readily hit as-is without slipstream, for a good few awkward seconds before having to brake for the Mulsanne Chicanes and Indianapolis.
Very oddly however, the fuel readout reads 85ℓ at maximum, when the actual car has a 100ℓ tank. How the game handles this disparity is that the remaining fuel in percentage is applied to 85ℓ, and displayed as such. So, if for example, if you have half a tank of fuel, instead of reading "50.00", it'd read "42.50". The low fuel warning light comes on at 10% remaining, which is 10ℓ of fuel in the tank and 8.50 in the readout. Why Polyphony Digital couldn't have just made the readout accurate instead of making me do mathematical gymnastics in the middle of a race, I won't ever know.
Lastly - and this is admittedly a very nitpicky point about the car's interior - it lacks the protective amulet behind the driver's side seat and the red sticker above the gear lever that the real car has had since the 1991 race:
The protective amulet/ talisman/ sticker/ good luck charm, whatever you want to call them, are from Take Shrine (read as tah-kay) in Hiroshima, where Mazda's HQ is located. They read,「多家神社交通安全御守護」, read as "Take Jinjya koutsuu anzen o shugo". It roughly translates to "Take Shrine Protection for Safe Driving". Given that the only components on the 787B that failed in the 24 Hour race was a headlight and a precautionary wheel bearing change, I'm a believer in the efficacy of the charm. The 787B in the game missing this charm, and the red sticker above the gear lever I feel robs it a lot of its soul. But maybe that's a good thing, considering how badly represented as a whole it is in the game.
I probably should pay a visit to the shrine for some divine protection as well before publishing this review, because I'm about to criticise, of all things, the sound of the 787B in Gran Turismo Sport.
First off, have an unedited video I recorded with the car on game version 1,23, the very patch that the 787B was introduced to Gran Turismo Sport with:
If you've driven the 787B in the game recently (like, if, say, you joined us for our weekly race every Tuesday night, 10pm CST!), you'll know that the above video sounded NOTHING like what you've heard in the game. Not only that, but it was missing its irregular idling "brap brap brap" sound, which would be the FIRST thing you'd notice if you've ever been around the car in real life. It seemed like a really obvious and odd thing to miss, because the 787B in GT5 and GT6 both had the brapping. Hell, even the LM55 VGT has it!
The sound was so atrocious that it was immediately patched in the next update to what we currently have, a huge improvement over that ghastly atrocity in 1.23. It begs the question though: how in the HELL did Polyphony Digital get the sound so, SO wrong?
Well, turns out, PD for some reason, in their infinite wisdom, chose to record an aftermarket 4 Rotor RX-7 from Defined Autoworks for the sound and pass it off as the 787B's.
I'm sorry, but what the actual FUCK?!
Even though the sound has been much improved from Version 1.23, I still have a few issues with the sound of the car. I find that the sound has a very odd, grating grainy effect to it, that makes it sound more like a cheap RC toy car than a legendary Le Mans winning granddaddy of Rotary Engines. This awful sound is most prominent in chase cam. The idle brapping has been reinstated into the game, albeit this time only as a sound sample that plays when the engine is idling, and will abruptly cut when you rev the engine, or even look around with your Directional Pad in cockpit view. In Gran Turismo 5 and 6, the brapping is directly tied to the revs of the engine, and the brapping will increase with frequency if you revved it slowly from idle, until they became so frequent they form a constant, unbroken sound. When the revs fell, the unbroken sound will similarly break into highly frequent braps. Again, you can hear the actual car rev slowly from idle in the above linked video as well, as well as the engine starting sound, which sounds NOTHING like what we currently have in the game.
Oh, and yes, the engine sound is simplified and recycled for the RX-Vision GT3. And yes, that car's most likely going to be the cover car of Gran Turismo 7. Have I ruined enough things for you yet?
So what have we learned today? The 787B in Gran Turismo Sport is a sack of badly covered lies. Quite literally every aspect of it in this game is flat out wrong at worst and dubious at best: its suspension, its power output, the all-important engine noise, the gearbox, the interior, the downforce values... For the love of all that one can consider dear and holy, even the freaking fuel gauge isn't honest. As icing on the cake, it's dumped into the single most nonsensical category in the game: Group 1, where it not only has zero competitive merit, it's downright abysmal. Truly, everything about this mock "787B" is a deplorable, hopeless, lying sack of shit. PD ought to be ashamed of themselves, and Mazda should sue. Really, if Polyphony Digital had to fly over to America for a 4 Rotor RX-7 to record sounds for the 787B, when the 787B is sitting right there in Mazda's HQ in running condition, if they failed to realise things that should be IMMEDIATELY obvious to anyone if they as much sat in the car and started it, like the idle sound and the dog leg gearbox, it makes me wonder if Polyphony Digital had the actual car at all to scan, record, and evaluate its handling for the game. The 787B in Gran Turismo Sport is a disrespectful, lazy, barely concealed con job, and thus a howling, screaming Beater.
The actual car still won the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans, though. Nothing else matters in a racing car. Nothing else matters in a racing car...
*silent sobbing in a dark corner*
As much as I whined and complained about the sound of the 787B in this game, I do have to say that, along with Assetto Corsa, Gran Turismo Sport's 787B is the best sounding digital 787B today. GTS has that high pitched wail almost spot on, though I find that Assetto Corsa seems to capture a mechanical whine in the cockpit better, making it sound deeper and more immersive. Here's a mostly unedited video of the sound in cockpit view and cinematic camera, where it sounds best:
SPOILER 2:
So I figure I ought to actually try to fix something for once instead of just whining and moaning about them. To that end, I've boot up both GT5 and GT6 to get an idea of what might be more accurate suspension settings for the 787B, which involved... maths. A lot of maths.
GT5 SETTINGS
GT6 SETTINGS
The reason I took two games to reference is because I seem to recall an update in GT6 giving cars obscene amounts of Camber angles. GT6 is also the only game that actually gives me ride height values. That's the easy part - the car has a ride height of 85mm, or roughly 3.35 inches.
The hard part comes when you try to determine the spring rates for Gran Turismo Sport. Gran Turismo 6 uses kgf to measure spring rates, which is WAY more commonly understood than freaking Natural Frequency (what even IS that?!) for spring rate readings, which is infuriatingly what Gran Turismo Sport uses.
So we need to do even MORE mathsing.
The formula for Natural Frequency is given as:
f = √(k / m) ÷ 2π
where k is the spring constant in Newtons per Metre, and m is the oscillating mass in kilograms.
Converting kgf/mm to N/m, we get:
15.8kgf/mm = 154945.1 N/m
14.8kgf/mm = 145138.4 N/m
Given the car's weight distribution of 49% front, 51% rear, we calculate the weight over the front and rear axles.
0.49*830 = 406.7kg
0.51*830 = 423.3kg
We then divide each of the axle weight by two to distribute the load evenly between two springs per axle, disregarding lateral imbalance.
406.7/2 = 203.35kg
423.3/2 = 211.65kg
And finally, we punch in the numbers into the formula:
ffront = √(154945.1 / 203.35) ÷ 2π
ffront = 4.393 260 610 269 68
ffront ≈ 4.39Hz
frear = √(145138.4 / 211.65) ÷ 2π
frear = 4.167 754 804 282 14
frear ≈ 4.17Hz
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