Mazda RT24-P

This is the catalogue record of the Mazda RT24-P, one of 180 models Mazda has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

The record does not fix a firm introduction year for the Mazda RT24-P, which is itself informative: cars without a clean launch date are usually prototypes, coachbuilt specials, or models whose history was written down long after the fact. The catalogue keeps them anyway, because the odd corners of the record are where the interesting machines hide.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Mazda RT24-P reads like this: the record lists its engine as gasoline engine; quoted output is NNN hp; kerb weight is recorded at 2,050 lb (930 kg) including driver. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Mazda story

Within Mazda's own catalogue the Mazda RT24-P sits alongside the Mazda BT-50, the Mazda T2000, the Efini MS-8, the Mazda 121. The record names the Lola B12/80 Mazda as its predecessor, anchoring one end of its lineage. Design is credited to Mark Handford, Bob & Bill Riley, Jacques Flynn.

On the record

The Mazda RT24-P also has a competition record: 7 recorded wins from 47 starts. A race history changes how a car should be valued — competition machines appreciate on provenance, not depreciation curves. For the years the United States federal record covers, EPA-rated economy comes in at 29 mpg combined, which works out near $2,100 a year in fuel at current prices.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

Reading a sparse record honestly

Some pages in this library brim with specifications; others, like corners of every archive, are thin. The honest response to a thin record is to say so, not to pad it. What is shown here is exactly what the public record supports today — and because the harvest re-runs nightly, the page you are reading is the fullest version of this car's open record that existed the last time the site was built.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Mazda RT24-P was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.