Announcing Prodrive Legends

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Not content with still building some of the most competitive, cutting edge motorsport vehicles of today, Prodrive now look to bolster the ever increasing historic racing scene with the creation of their new Legends operation from the Banbury facility to help support those who race their cars from its previous three decades of manufacturing.

"Prodrive is seeing a growing demand for its historic race and rally cars and has launched Prodrive Legends, a new operation that is dedicated to the authentication, restoration and support of these cars.

The creation of Prodrive Legends is a direct response to a significant rise in requests from vehicle owners to verify the provenance and then restore race and rally cars Prodrive has constructed over the last three decades. There are also an increasing number of opportunities to race historic competition cars and a dramatic rise in values, especially for vehicles that have won high-profile events, fuelling the market for historic cars.

Since its formation in 1984, Prodrive has built more than 1,100 race and rally cars, from the first Porsche 911 SC RS to the latest Aston Martin Vantage GT cars. These cars have won titles across a range of motorsport disciplines, from World Rally titles for Subaru with Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg, to world sports car and Le Mans titles with Aston Martin and Ferrari; and British Touring Car Championships with BMW and Ford.

“Many of these cars are now appreciating classics with immense value to their passionate owners,” says Paul Howarth, head of motorsport operations. “With the formation of Prodrive Legends, owners can now bring the cars home to the same company – and even many of the same people – who originally designed and built them and took them to multiple wins.”

The programme, which only covers Prodrive vehicles, includes: a ‘fixed price’ authentication service that will verify whether a chassis is a genuine Prodrive car; factory specification engine rebuilds in Prodrive’s new powertrain centre; and whole-vehicle work from servicing and race preparation to ground-up restorations to the original Prodrive specification.

Over the years, Prodrive has built more than 700 Subaru rally cars, including nearly 100 Impreza and Legacy Group As and 160 Impreza World Rally Cars. In the 1980s the company also built 40 BMW E30 M3s and, more recently, nearly 50 Aston Martin racing cars based on the DB9 and a further 180 on the previous generation Vantage"

The range of historic Aston Martin and Aston Martin Racing cars that can benefit from this new service facility include the DBR9, DBRS9, DBR1-2 prototype, V8 GTE and V12 GT3.

Source material - Prodrive