One of the best looking and succesfull of all the Thundersaloons cars , winning the 1993 + 94 titles.

Built by Jim Morgan`s team at JTM Racing Services for Rod Birley as a replacement for his Mazda RX-7 for the 1993 Thundersaloon Series. A very high quaility build reportedly taking some 2500 man hours and costing around 100,000 pounds. Autosport reported `based around a standard steel ( Honda ) Prelude shell, the racer features double-wishbone suspension. A Hewland DGB transaxle sits in the tail`. Like the RX-7 painted black and sponsored by `Armour All`. Initially run with a turbo 2.3 V-Tec engine before gaining an ex-Rouse BTCC Cosworth Turbo ,giving up to 530 BHP@8000 rpm. The bodywork was by Dove Engineering. Its first win was the Castle Combe double ( May 1993 ) , Birley and co-driver Richard Piper adding double wins also at Brands + Oulton on the way to the overall title. `The car is amazingly powerful but it handles realy well` said Piper. John Barker was also impressed by the car when he tested it for `Peformance Car` ( Feb 1994 ).

Birley took 7 wins , assisted by Ian Cantwell , to retain the 1994 Thundersaloons title.

After the collapse of Thundersaloons Birley continued racing the Prelude in Formula Saloons 1997-03 winning 5 races outright + 12 class wins along with races in the S.E.Sports/Saloons and other Silhouette races mostly at Brands or Lydden. After a succesful first 10 years Birley sold the car onto Peter Thurston in Oct 2003 and he

continued the cars career in Euro Saloons. Current owner David Beatty brought the car to the CSCC Special Saloons series .