Screencap via Rob Dahm
“Project Ahura” is the world’s first all-wheel-drive four-rotor FD Mazda RX-7, and it’s exactly as insane as you’d expect it to be. It was built from a car that YouTuber Rob Dahm had since he was a teenager, and he’s here with a tour of everything under the hood that makes it work.
Rotaries — even four-rotor ones — tend to be small, but fitting this build in with an all-wheel-drive drivetrain was a unique challenge that Dahm explains. Garrett’s largest ball-bearing turbo is nearly half the size of the engine, for one. The suspension design was based on Ken Block’s insane Hoonicorn.
Dahm says the car ultimately cost several hundred thousand dollars to build, complete with the professionally-built custom 2.6-litre four-rotor engine that was shipped from New Zealand. The ham-fisted jamokes at UPS lost it for months.
Bonus: the car was assembled in NHRA hall-of-famer and rotary guru Abel Ibarra’s shop, which has plenty of eye candy of its own.