Since the company's founding, Mazda has relentlessly taken on new challenges. Symbolic of this "never stop challenging" spirit was the commercialization of the rotary engine, which no other company in the world had ever achieved. Then, taking on the challenge of the 24 Hours of Le Mans brought this technology to the pinnacle of world motoring. In 1991, Mazda became the first rotary engine manufacturer in the world and the first Japanese manufacturer to take overall victory in this prestigious race.
The Mazda 787B is based on the 1986 Mazda 757, for which British race car designer Nigel Stroud was in charge of basic design, and is the culmination of a series of design changes made by Mazdaspeed's design group to optimize the RE-equipped Group C car, modifying each part of the car to match the change in power unit from a 3-rotor RE to a 4-rotor RE.