There were countless amazing sights and sounds both on and off track at the Monterey Reunion historic meeting at Laguna Seca earlier this month.
But there’s little doubt that the images that truly went around the world came from a dramatic fire that befell a 1989 vintage Mazda 767B under it’s awning; the GTP-spec car was briefly engulfed in flame before multiple people sprang into action to fight the fire.
The legendary rotary-powered Mazda 767B (chassis #003) made headlines in August 2026 when it suffered a sudden paddock fire at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca during the lead-up to the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. 2 million dollar loss, back to the drawing board 💨 pic.twitter.com/qhJcZNPCGl
— Mikey Likes Terps² (@ProperDongs) August 15, 2026
Video via @ProperDongs (apparently!)
The internet being the internet, there are a huge number of ‘facts’ around as fan video was shared – DSC thought it best to go to the best source we had to find out what happened, and last weekend’s ELMS meeting at Spa presented an opportunity as Tony McIntosh stepped into a one-off drive aboard Racing Spirit of Leman’s LMGT3 Aston Martin.
Tony owns the Mazda and was keen to talk too about the rapid-fire journey that he has made in building a passion for the present, and the history of the sport.
“Motor racing really has been a very recent thing for me and, in particular, the history of the sport was something that I really was not into until remarkably recently. I really didn’t watch racing until I got involved in the sport,” he said.
“The Mazda at Laguna Seca was a real shame; there was a fuel leak, there were mistakes made, but I’m not gonna put that on anyone.
“The guys put so much love into these cars, and the particular guys that were on that car love that car so much. It would be like, you know, me judging a mom on her child almost.
“We did get lucky because basically the car was wrapped in like a PPF (Paint Protection Film), and so there’s really not much damage, which is awesome, and we learned a valuable lesson.
“Yes I have to rebuild some of it, but you’re not going to notice it. It’s going to be rebuilt back to the way it was. On those guys’ time it’s probably a month to two months. But in the context of the rebuild to get it track ready, which was nine months, that’s a pretty short time to get back to perfection.
“There’s just so much to those cars, and they are very dangerous. So like, you’re checking the brakes three, four, five times. You’re just really going over every little thing over and over. With all of it done to the standard we did though, that car at Laguna Seca, it would almost bring you to tears while you’re driving it. It is that good. What a place!”
But the Mazda is not the only car that Tony, and his very recent adoption of a passion for the sport, has acquired!
“No, the first was the Toyota Eagle MkII,” he explained.
“Oddly, after I first became aware of the cars, I said that I’d love to drive one and was kind of warned off, ‘ They’re kind of like bought and put on a shelf. The owners will bring them out once in a blue moon.”
“And I thought, man, if I get the chance to get one I’d get it into proper shape and race it!
“What happened next was that Parker (Thompson) sent me this link to a Bring a Trailer thing where the Toyota was on sale, and I had done a little research on it. Up to that point, I had never heard of AAR!
“I was at SRO America, and it was a GT4 race, and I was in the (Toyota Supra) car and I told the Toyota guys, “Hey, can you give me some information about this?” So they sat me down before the race, and we talked about it, and they told me the heritage about it.
“Then it turned out that I couldn’t bid on it because I was doing Quali in the Supra. So I was in the Toyota Supra doing Quali.
“So I was in the car and I gave it to one of my best friends and I was like, “Here, manage this. Here’s a range that I’d like to stay within on the price.”
“It was probably best I didn’t bid on it because then like it would have turned into a bidding war or something. I knew he would be great for it, so I get in the car for quali and then I just forgot about it.
“After Quali, they got on the radio and they said, “Oh, and by the way, you won the bid on the Mark II. Never saw the car, never went to go see it. I just looked through all the pictures and the history, and it just looked like it was in perfect condition!”
“So that was the Toyota, now I owned it but I had no one to run it and I had no one to work on it!
“I was contacted after the weekend, everything was great. The hand off was amazing. It was being taken care of by the guy, Mike Seymour, who had handled the sale. He was super knowledgeable about the car so I just said, “You know what? I know nothing about this thing. Just keep it at your shop. I’ll eventually make my way out there, I just have a busy schedule.”
“He asked what my plans were for the car and I told him I wanted to run it. Figure out whatever you need to do, and we’ll take it out and we’ll run it.
“He said, “Okay, how hard are you gonna run it?”
“We are gonna run it to the max!”
“I think that was a surprise to him but he gathered himself well and told me it was going to need some work, “It’s in great shape, but it’s not run like that for a while.”
“So I asked how long he would need and we agreed a plan to have it at a track within 120 days!
“He kept to that schedule and Parker and I went out and tested at Button Willow.
“They had done a great job and at the end of that test I said to Mike that I’d like to start a collection of just Group C cars, I’d like to take them all over the world. But I’d also like the car to be significant and I wanted to race them hard.
“He was straight down the line like, “Are you sure you want to do this? These cars weren’t really known for being all that reliable.” I respect that and we’ve gone forward from there.
“So fast forward, maybe six months later, Mike (Seymour) called me and said, “Hey, I know a guy, and he has this Mazda Group C car for sale.”
“When I first started racing, it was with Mazda, and my son came to the track, and he saw one of these cars at the track one weekend and was blown away by it. He was like 12 at the time and just stood by the car the entire time.
“That was 767B chassis #002 and my boy knew everything about it. He just talked about it non-stop. Told me the history about it, everything.
“Troy Flis’ guys would start the car up each weekend it was at the track but I was always out in practice or racing in my Miata (which had the same livery as the 767B), so I never really got to see it or to hear it as I was always busy.
“But when Mike called me and told me a sister car (chassis #003 – Le Mans GTP class winner in 1990) was available I was very interested. [I] told him I was interested and went to look at the car. It had effectively been sitting in a warehouse for about 10 years. It had been started but not run properly at all.
“I was like, “Okay, Mike, done deal. Get everything you can that they have with the car and get it going”. So it took probably 10 months for Mike and his guys to get it to where we could take it to a track, and it ran flawlessly, perfect.
“The arrangement is simple – I put all of my trust in Mike and his guys with these cars. They know how to set up the cars but we made it very clear that we’re gonna run them hard and we’re gonna have real drivers driving them.
“My best friend that originally bid on that Toyota Mark II. said to me: “Are you sure you want to do these? These cars are really dangerous and they’re really fast”, and I’m like, yeah, but these are really special cars. You take the Mazda, or one of the Toyotas, you start it and you run it and you see how much passion there is out there for these cars.
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“You hear the same thing. It doesn’t matter how old the person is; it’ll be like, “Oh my God, this is the coolest thing in the world”. Or “I remember I was nine years old, and this is the first car I saw.”
“So for me, I love to share that kind of stuff. You only get one life, and if you could spend it however you want, I’d spend mine sharing cars!
“Not many people would invest that ton of money and effort into it. Fine, that’s my choice to do it, and I love that I’m the weirdo that decides that.
“As for the experience of driving the cars, the Eagle Toyota Mark II and the Mark III, you could just blip the throttle, and you can shift it, like fast shift it through the gates. But I just fell in love with the Mazda.
“It’s hard to drive. It’s very light, and it has a lot of mechanical feedback. It’s slightly under powered compared to the other cars, so it’s more of a momentum car, kind of like the Mazda Cup car, the MX5. It moves around a lot.
“You need a lot of forearm strength in the middle of the turn because the car binds up and it sticks to the ground so hard you feel as if you don’t know if you could turn the steering wheel anymore. And then you don’t want to break the grip and go straight, it needs a lot of finesse.
“You can’t bang through the gears real fast. You have to shift, wait, shift, wait a second. You have to be very gentle with it to not grind the gears. So, it’s a very unique racing style, and I really enjoy it. It’s like a type of therapy almost, really.
“While on one level you are thinking “I wonder what kind of lap times these are”, when you’re driving it, you really don’t care. You’re just in your moment, just burning through the gears. I am thinking though, can I push these brake zones? The car’s light enough where you push a brake zone, you’ll lock up some wheels, and it is forgiving in that sense, in that you can dial it back in, release the brake pedal a little bit. The car will come back into compliance.
“Okay, you miss the apex by a metre or two but it’s not like you’re in the gravel immediately. So, it’s just a fantastic car. When you drive that versus the two Toyotas, the two Toyotas are from like a different planet. It’s almost if you took a 500 cc two-stroke engine out of a motorcycle and put it in a car. It’s really what those two Toyotas are like driving!
“The Mazda though is a real joy, and we’ll have it back and running very quickly.”
POSTSCRIPT – We showed the story above to Tony to check on a couple of details – He responded with the following video clip – mildly scorched she may be but #003 lives!
