Think Group B and you’re probably beset with images of flame-spitting, mid-engined all-wheel drive hatches, all monster wings, distended arches and gaping intakes, pulverising great gales of air into submission; parting seas of spectators, eyes wide, screaming and cheering, pebbledashed with grit and bedecked from head to foot in dusty warpaint.

That sort of thing. You probably don’t think of a Mazda RX-7.

The reason for that is that Mazda missed the Group B boat. By the time it had designed and homologated its RX-7 Evo Works car, the powers that be had decided that Group B was too wild and dangerous and had canned the regs that had – for a brief moment – made rallying more popular than F1.

The detailing on this car is magnificent, with all the original stickers and fastenings. The peripheral-ported 13B twin rotor lump sits around 10cm further back compared to the production car, while the fuel lines run between the seats. That ducktail spoiler houses an oil cooler and all-up weight was less than a tonne. The Enkei magnesium alloys are period perfect and that monster six-cowl light pod on the front is the stuff of teenage revhead fantasy. Even the almost dainty NACA ducts on the bonnet are things of beauty.

This particular car just sat in the dark at Mazda Rally Team Europe, a forgotten car that would never have succeeded in a rally category that had been killed at the stroke of a legislator’s pen. Nobody was interested in a car that was, in truth, a bit of an embarrassment to Mazda. It was shuffled off to the Swiss importer in the early 90s and then reappeared in Scandinavia before collector and rally nut David Sutton brought it to the UK. He took the car to pieces and reassembled it with an obsessive level of detail and now it’s being sold.

Join the bidding at RM Sotheby’s on 6th September.