Presented
May 17 1991 at the Silverstone circuit, the 92S was to be March's standard
bearer for their reentrance into the 3.5 liter Sports Car World Championship.
"When we assessed the sportscar market's needs we realized that the task
was to fill the void left by Porsche and that most sportscar teams require
a complete turn-key package. What is needed is a whole car, not a
chassis and engine separately", David Reeves, Managing Director of March
Engineering. March intended to initially build 8 chassis for sale
with testing to begin in the Fall of '91. European and Japanese customers
were anticipated.
The
car was first presented to the public via this presentation model.
Note that it is only half represented (the split line is down the middle)
and that the model was photographed against a mirror for these images.
Andy Thorby had been recruited from Toyota and the presentation model was
his design. But Nick Wirth's Simtek group was brought in as a consultant
and took over the car's initial wind tunnel studies. According to
David Reeves on the car's presentation day, "What you see here is the concept
model which was part of the design brief given to Simtek. Of course
the final 92S design is being refined and refined and I have no doubt that
the prototype will only bear a passing resemblance to the concept model."
Wirth
appears to have discarded all of the work done by Thorby and it can be
argued that this toe-in-the-water wind tunnel model is decidedly less mature
than the concept model. Customers for the 92S never materialized
and March went out of business with Simtek following suit. The model was
purchased from the auction of the Simtek properties upon that organization's
liquidation.
