BMW or Buick - March 86G GTP cars

If anyone has any information on the 1986 March GTP chassis originally made for BMW and then later converted to Buick, I would greatly appreciate a contact.

John Starkey has a story about the History of March GT Prototypes.
Maybe this can be a little help?

You can find it here: http://www.johnstarkeycars.com/Images/Feature_Car/marchGTP/marchGTP.html

BTW: one of the cars is for sale: http://www.johnstarkeycars.com/Images/CurrentListings/MarchBMW86G/MarchBMW86G.html

The cars were built by March under commision from BMW, they weren't simply customer 86G. After many fires, and one win,BMW retired from IMSA Mr. MOMO, Giampiero Moretti, bought the cars. Buick engines, both in turbo end atmospheric forms were installed, I remember that Ian Dawson (of the Grid fame, now at Ascari) was the team manager, and the result weren't that good....
Later Moretti bought a Porsche 962, reworked by the Gebhardts, then a Nissan ZX/GTP, in the meantime he raced a Joest 962 and supported Gebardth's Audi engined cars....

I have one of the BMW 86G-04 March GTP cars
The car was sold to Conte racing and leased to
Moretti I bought it in 1990 It has a 3.o ltr Buick

Interesting thread, I often wondered as a lad, why BMW had entered IMSA with a major attack and then pulled out so quickly. Politics I assume, but it s a great 'what if' to think that if they'd done ok there, Bimmer might well have rolled out a Group C assault or something towards the end of the decade?

The car/engine/driver line ups were strong enough IIRC. Didn't one of the guys have a monumental shunt at Road America in one of them, was it Davy Jones or am I confusing that with another incident?

Have to say i'd forgotten the cars were later run as private cars with different engines.

Interesting thread, I often wondered as a lad, why BMW had entered IMSA with a major attack and then pulled out so quickly. Politics I assume, but it s a great 'what if' to think that if they'd done ok there, Bimmer might well have rolled out a Group C assault or something towards the end of the decade?

The car/engine/driver line ups were strong enough IIRC. Didn't one of the guys have a monumental shunt at Road America in one of them, was it Davy Jones or am I confusing that with another incident?

Have to say i'd forgotten the cars were later run as private cars with different engines.

BMW threw a lot of money at this (I believe no less than 6 chassis for a programme that lasted barely a year!), but one significant factor in it's demise seems to have been the series of fires Fausto mentioned- two cars were lost to testing fires early season- the last 2 chassis were apparently supplied as replacements for the cars destroyed

According to Endurance Racing 1982-91 by Ian Briggs,

'after some time the cause of the fires was tracked down to the rear bodywork sagging down onto the exhaust pipes under high speed loads, but in the meantime, so bad had become the problem that BMW were forced to withdraw from the Daytona 24 hours season-opener. As the year went on, and trackside BMW bonfires became a feature of the GTP championship, BMW's marketing men began to worry about the company's image, which almost certainly led to the decision at the year end to leave expenive racing out of BMW's future Stateide marketing strategy....'

Didn't one of the guys have a monumental shunt at Road America in one of them, was it Davy Jones or am I confusing that with another incident?

Think its this one.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=H4BUonHSm_k

Yes, having seen it again, he did very well to get out of that one.

Sw another shunt that a March BMW was involved in later that year, my god that season must've been expensive!