Always wanted to be a rally expert but never had the right car for the job? Well how about a former WRC 1997 Subaru S5 WRX rally car, raced by the late Colin McRae? It doesn’t get much better than this.
This WRX rally car is going up for auction later this month and is expected to fetch somewhere between £340,000 and £380,000. That’s around AU$593,000 to AU$660,000. It is a lot, but you are getting a lot of car, and history.
It was raced by Colin McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist at the 1997 Monte Carlo Rally, where McRae unfortunately had a crash and didn’t finish. Since then it has been used in a number of rallies throughout the 2000s, and was converted to right-hand drive for Irish stages.
According to Silverstone Auctions the car can be converted by back to its original left-hand form if the new owner desires. It features the number plate ‘P2 WRC’, which was featured on Colin McRae’s stint at the 1997 Monte Carlo event. The ‘P2 WRC’ plate was used on other rally cars in the 1990s but is now back with the original Subaru.
You can see the car competing in the rally coverage video below. It is in Italian but evidence of McRae’s crash can be seen at around the 8:07 mark. He was up against some legendary drivers, such as Carlos Sainz, Juha Kankkunen, and Tommi Makinen. The event was won by Subaru, with the ‘P3 WRC’ WRX driven by Piero Liatti.
The car has been well looked after and has been used in various races, press events and other shows, with the sellers suggesting owners could continue to run it in historic events or fully restore it back to its original specification to keep as a collector’s item.
If you’re interested head over to the Silverstone Auctions listing for more details. The auction will take place on February 25 at Stoneleigh Park in the UK. Harry Whale of Silverstone Auctions said:
“P2 WRC is a well-known 2-door Subaru WRC car and very desirable in its own right. It has certainly lived a busy and fascinating life and in our opinion is all the better for it. It’s been well cared-for in private ownership for almost 20 years and combined with its links to the great Colin McRae, this really is a very rare opportunity to continue the fascinating story of P2 WRC.”
