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Originally Posted by ian beckett
What a wonderful surprise this thread is!!I knew that at the end of '92 The Benson and Hedges/Frank Gardner team were hoping to race the new Coupe(E36) fitted with the 2.5 M3 Evolution engine but gave up because of the combinations lack of homologation and continued with the trusty M3 instead.They eventually changed to the 318is for '94 onwards.I did not realise however that such a combination actually raced...what position did it finish in? This is my understanding of the history of the British 318i's.....Ray Bellm took over the Vic Lee team of three cars on Lee's imprisonment and at the end of '92 also purchased the three cars of Prodrive.One,the car McRae had raced at Knockhill was acquired for Matt Neal.Two were sold to Oreca in France.For '93 a new team(Dynamics) was set up and ran three cars,one was the ex-VLM/Harvey car,one was the ex-McRae,Prodrive/Neal car and the third was an ex-Prodrive car brought back from Oreca/France before the start of the season.Oreca tested their two cars but they were never raced by them because the French regulations demanded that 4 door shells were used.Their race cars were newly built by them in France.This leaves two cars unaccounted for,the car Bellm himself raced in '92 plus that raced for VLM by Steve Soper.One of these two cars must therefore be that used by Paul Morris in the '92 Australian GP support race at Adelaide.Does anyone know what became of it? What about the other ''missing'' VLM car,anyone know? Does anyone have other photos of the 'M3/Coupe' which we started with?To complete the story,Team Dynamics built a brand new 4 door car midway through '93.Bellm sold his share of Team Dynamics midway through the season to Matt Neals dad Steve.At the seasons end The car Bellm had raced in '93 was sold to Geof Steel and eventually to Paul Pickett.A second Dynamics car was sold to Hamish Irvine and eventually to Sweden.Matt Neals car was sold to Team Mobitech in Sweden and finally the new 4 d or car was sold to Peggen Andersson in Sweden.I hope this story can have some of the missin detail filled in.Ian.
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Brilliant stuff Ian, you've answered a whole bunch of questions I was going to ask... I remembered 2 of the Dynamics cars going to Steel & Irvine and the 4-door going to Andersson in Sweden (think he ran it at the Donington World Cup the following year?), but I didn't know one of the Coupes went to Sweden, or the Prodrive cars going to ORECA...