It’s not every day we get to show off a tough little Mazda that takes home tinware at shows and rips up the streets, but Troy Dunning’s ute does both and more. We’ve run the odd pic of his Mazda 1000 in our coverage of Red CentreNATS and Gazzanats Darwin in the past, but after it picked up the top gong in our VIP Park-Up during Drag Challenge 2025, we figured it was high time we took a more in-depth look at the ute.

First published in the June 2026 issue of Street Machine

In addition to creating this rotary-powered rocket ship, Troy’s also had a prominent hand in building a couple of stand-out Street Machine feature cars: Troy David’s crazy PRIMED FJ ute (SM, Sep ’19) and Paul Tinning’s mental turbo V10-powered XP (SM, Nov ’22). Yep, he knows his way around a bit of metal, and fabricated all sorts of bits for the gearheads of Darwin before he moved to Radelaide and took up a gig with Phoenix Custom Restorations.

So, how did he catch the rotary bug? “My family all had V8s and sixes, so I thought I was going to be a V8 guy,” Troy says. “The first time I heard a rotary, I was like, ‘What is that?’, and I was pretty much addicted from then on. I’ve probably had eight or nine rotaries throughout my life.”

Troy stumbled upon this Mazda 1000 ute for sale about 14 years ago as an unfinished project, complete with a 13B, Toyota Supra W58 ’box and a nine-inch diff. “It was in reasonably bad shape, and it didn’t have a tub,” he says. When finding a decent tub proved impossible, Troy decided to whip up his own tray instead. In fact, if you spot something fabricated on this ute, Troy’s probably responsible – the catch can, overflow tank, CalTracs, rollcage, dash, fuel cell, and engine and gearbox mounts are all his handiwork.

Once he had the ute’s panels ironed straight, it was time for paint, so Troy picked that blazing red straight out of the Ferrari catalogue and handed the job of applying it to Paul Tinning’s crew at The Resto Shop.

The 13B that came with the ute was supposed to be a good bit of gear, but it imploded as the Mazda was loaded onto the trailer bound for Red CentreNATS 2017. The boys at RP Motorsports pointed Troy towards Tony at Rotor Torque, who went right through the old donk and pronounced it DOA. A suitable new engine was specified to meet Troy’s requirements: “I said I just want something that I can jump in, do skids, rev its tits off and be reliable,” he laughs.

To that end, Tony screwed together a brand-new 13B from a collection of factory Mazda parts, including S4 RX-7 rotors and nitrided end plates that feature extended bridgeports. Although the rotating assembly is also ridgey-didge, it has been balanced to within an inch of its life in preparation for Troy turning it as rapidly as possible. Oil is sucked out of the sump (suitably modified by Troy to clear the ute’s front crossmember) by a fettled factory pump, and a PAC Performance oil cooler/radiator combo ensures the vital fluids don’t vaporise.

Air and fuel are delivered via an ASK inlet manifold with extended runners and Injection Perfection throttlebodies with Siemens 60lb injectors. The MicroTech ECU under the dash takes its cues from an RX-7 crank angle sensor, and LS coils light the fires.

Troy put a heap of work into the exhaust design and had Rotaflo build a pair of custom 2in resonators and a single 3in rear muffler to his specs before he knocked up the rest of the system.

The little twin-rotor pumps out a healthy 202hp at a limited 8500rpm, but it’s been built to swing the tacho needle past 10,000rpm, so there’s certainly more on tap.

The nine-inch diff under the bum may seem like overkill for an 800kg car with 200hp, but at least Troy won’t be breaking it any time soon. The Mazda has, however, developed an appetite for gearboxes, having chewed up three W58s – two of them lost gears at the drag strip, while the third gave Troy an undesired reason to change his undies when it locked up on the freeway!

The Mazda’s underpinnings are simple yet effective. The front suspension and steering are mostly stock, with LJ Torana springs and HQ shocks keeping it at the right height. Down the back, Troy ripped a few leaves out of the Mazda cart springs to soften them and whipped up his own shock mount bar to hang the Spax Krypton adjustables from. For anchors, the ute wears VT discs at all four corners, driven by a 1in master cylinder.

Since the Mazda’s been on the road for a few years now, Troy has begun chasing a new goal: to make it onto the list of the 20 quickest naturally aspirated 13B-powered cars in Australia. An 11-second timeslip with an aspirated rotor would certainly be a tasty accolade to add to his collection of show ’n’ shine trophies, and after that, the ute will probably cop the billet engine and big snail that’s hiding in Troy’s shed in the quest for eights.

TROY DUNNING
1976 MAZDA 1000

THANKS
My wife Suzi Setchell; Bradley Baker and Jamie Irwin; Paul Tinning and his crews at Coonawarra Panel Works and The Resto Shop; Chris Tinning at A&C Auto Electrics; Craig Ferguson at All Car Upholstery; Tony Marr at Rotor Torque; Keelan Peck at Pecky’s Performance & Dyno; Paul Preston and Michael Pfau (aka Team Chisler Racing); Dave Carpenter (RIP) and Jono Stephenson at Signtech; Jack Welsh at Phoenix Custom Restorations; anyone else who helped along the way.