Following Mazda's historic outright victory at the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans with the rotary-powered 787B, the company sought to continue in sportscar racing and prove the win was no accident. However, a reorganization of the World Sportscar Championship by the FIA in 1991 rendered Mazda's Wankel rotary engines ineligible. The new regulations required technologically advanced 3.5-litre powerplants analogous to those used in Formula One — an area in which Mazda had no existing competitive hardware.
Rather than develop an entirely new engine at prohibitive cost, Mazda turned to Judd (Engine Developments), purchasing their GV10 3.5-litre V10 developed for the 1991 Formula One season. The engine was rebadged as the Mazda MV10. For a chassis, Mazda approached Tom Walkinshaw Racing, whose Jaguar program had ended after 1991. TWR offered the XJR-14 — the car that had won the 1991 WSC title for Jaguar — to customers for 1992. Mazda acquired it, and designer Nigel Stroud made minor modifications including new side-view mirrors and headlamps, after which the car was renamed the MXR-01.
The arrangement carried an inherent limitation: the XJR-14 had not been updated since the close of the 1991 season, and Mazda possessed neither the technical depth to develop it further nor the financial resources to keep pace with the upgrade cycles of Peugeot and Toyota. The Judd engine was also considerably underpowered relative to those rival factory teams. The MXR-01 raced to the end of its career largely unmodified as a result.
Mazdaspeed ran a single MXR-01 through most of the 1992 World Sportscar Championship, with a second car entered specifically for Le Mans. Despite the power disadvantage, the team finished third in the WSC teams' championship — a creditable result given the circumstances. The best individual result was second place at the 500km of Silverstone.
At Le Mans, the MXR-01 provided a brief highlight: the car led the race at various stages during the opening hours, running in front of the dominant Peugeot squad, before settling into an honourable fourth-place finish by the end of the 24 hours.
In Japan, Mazdaspeed campaigned a single MXR-01 in the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship. The results were modest in absolute terms, but Mazda secured second in the constructor's championship for the series — respectable in light of the power deficit it faced against Toyota and Nissan machinery.
After both the 1993 WSC and JSPC seasons were cancelled, and with the RX-792P program concluding after the 1992 IMSA season, Mazda withdrew from factory sportscar racing entirely.
Tom Walkinshaw Racing constructed five MXR-01 chassis in total:
MXR-01 #001 — Raced exclusively in the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship.
MXR-01 #002 — Spare, used as a test car at Le Mans.
MXR-01 #003 — Spare, used as a test car at Le Mans.
MXR-01 #004 — Ran the entire WSC schedule.
MXR-01 #005 — Second car entered only for Le Mans.
The MXR-01 marked the end of an era for Mazda in top-level sportscar racing. Coming just one year after the 787B's Le Mans triumph, it illustrated the difficulty of transitioning from a bespoke rotary program to a customer-chassis, piston-engine formula on a constrained budget. Though competitive enough to challenge for championship points and briefly lead at Le Mans, the car could never match the resources arrayed against it. Mazda's withdrawal after 1992 closed the chapter on a motorsport program that had run continuously since 1983.