IMSA's Lobster Car and Hard-Shelled ImmortalityAndi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)IMSA champ Randy Lanier says, "Seeing those huge claws coming after you in your rearview mirror? Weirdest fucking thing I ever seen."Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)Like all of humankind's best notions—medicine, toffee, harnessing fire—it's not entirely clear who came up with the proposition of painting an IMSA Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) car to look like a giant lobster.This story originally appeared in Volume 35 of Road & Track.Hearst Owned (Hearst Owned)But here we are, more than 40 years after that stroke of genius, still thinking about what a perfect idea that was. Yes, how perfectly silly. But also, what a fantastically unexpected hit of dopamine it is to see something fit so perfectly atop another very different thing. The car's tapered and curved cockpit mimics the crustacean's segmented shell. The chubby, forward-jutting front corners look like lobster claws even before the pattern goes on. "It was almost as if the car was designed for the livery more than the livery was designed for the car," says Stephen Bach. A freelance artist who occasionally illustrated Red Lobster and Olive Garden menus in the Eighties, Bach was the man hired to lay out the roughly 15-foot-long decapod onto the body panels in grease pencil.These original panels are hand-painted.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)Ask anyone who was even vaguely aware of IMSA racing in the early Eighties, and they will remember the lobster car. They may not have a clue that the big-lobster livery was first used on a March 82G GTP car. And they won't know that it arrived at its final form atop a March 83G (pictured here), a highly competitive race car from the brief period of GTP that took place before serious factory spending began. Further, fair-weather fans wouldn't know that the March 83G was developed to be the early GTP class's dominant car in part by legend Al Holbert. And such people didn't necessarily know whose car the lobster was either.AdvertisementAdvertisementDave Cowart, who co-drove the Chevy-powered Red Lobster March 83G with Kenper Miller beginning in '83, says, "Nobody had any idea who drove it. But they'd scream, 'Hey! There's that Red Lobster car!'"Hearst Owned (Hearst Owned)But if the livery overshadowed the people behind it, it was a dream come true for the purveyor of seafood and hush puppies. Red Lobster "felt they got their money's worth," Cowart says. If the car were conceived today, the team's merch game would kill.It's uncanny how perfectly lobster-like the upper body is.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)Cowart had a sponsorship deal with Red Lobster starting years before the 83G. He was the IMSA GTO champ in a Red Lobster–sponsored BMW M1. That Giorgetto Giugiaro–designed, sharp-edged sports car was not a suitable canvas for a biomorphic livery, so it ended up with more modest Red Lobster script on the sides and checkerboard stripes. When Cowart moved up to the newly formed GTP class with Miller, it was Red Lobster's money that paid for much of the dramatically increased cost, including the hand-painting of the body and touch-ups after every race. Looking back, Cowart estimates the sponsorship amounted to $250,000 for the '83 season, a tidy sum then.Current owner George Frey wanted the last of the analog GTP cars: "I didn't want to have to open a laptop to run the thing."Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)That money allowed Cowart and Miller to purchase March 83G-03, a chassis Holbert had driven to two wins early in the '83 season. Holbert was eager to run Porsche turbo engines, so he sold the Chevy-powered 03 car to Cowart and Miller. Ironically, Cowart says that at the time, he was fed up with Porsche turbo engines, which he'd tried to use in '82. The 82G was designed with a Chevy V-8, so there was no provision for the excessive heat generated by the Porsche turbos. Once, during a driver change, Cowart noticed that the steering wheel seemed too close to the seat. It turned out that the extreme heat had caused the fuel tank behind the cabin to balloon, pushing the seat forward. They had to retire the car from the race.The March 83G was the work of a young Adrian Newey.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)AdvertisementAdvertisementThere was no such trouble with the Chevy-powered 83G. Cowart and Miller never won with it as Holbert had, but it delivered several podium finishes. The car gave talented privateers a legitimate shot. The winner of the '83 GTP championship? Holbert, using a combination of Chevy- and Porsche-powered March 83Gs. And the champion for '84 was Randy Lanier in, yep, a March, in the updated car called 84G.Also, the 83G was one of the first projects for a 23-year-old March employee named Adrian Newey, as he proudly points out in his book, How to Build a Car. The man who would later become a Formula 1 design god carefully revised the old and not terribly successful 82G. This was Newey's winter project, and there was no budget for wind-tunnel testing. The structure of the car remained the same, but Newey reworked the critical ground-effects aerodynamics, modifying the nose in the process. He changed the rear wing and lightened the vehicle by about 90 pounds. It was enough to turn the car from a decent competitor into a two-time champion. Newey accompanied the first, and almost entirely untested, 83G to Daytona for the '83 24 Hours. There, the car, driven by Lanier, Terry Wolters, and Marty Hinze, finished second. It led almost the entire second half of the event until an engine misfire in the last hour slowed it down. So fond is Newey of his first big professional success, he co-drove that car in a historic race at Daytona in 2017.This particular 83G, first raced by Al Holbert, has always been powered by a Chevy V-8.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)Cowart and Miller would get their 83G later in '83 and run it for the remainder of the season, almost the full '84 roster of races, and part of '85. It took several second-place finishes in that time and became easily the most recognizable car in those early days of GTP. But by '85, Porsche had a stranglehold on GTP with its 962, taking that year's title and the next two. The March was no longer competitive, and Cowart and Miller retired the car from active competition. But Cowart kept it for about another 15 years, running it in vintage races before selling it in 2000.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick)Current owner George Frey bought it shortly after seeing it for sale on the auction site Bring a Trailer in 2013. An orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of a medical-device company, Frey is also an avid vintage racer and collector who got hooked on road racing as a kid attending races at Watkins Glen with his dad. The March is his first GTP car and his only aero car. It still has its original painted body panels.AdvertisementAdvertisementBecause of course it does. It's common for significant vintage race cars to retain or be reverted to the livery they wore during their most successful era. But this March 83G-03 does not wear the Red Roof Inn/CRC livery with which it won races. It wears something immeasurably more important—and weird.The crew chief for the car, Jack Deren, reckons the lobster has been repainted 16 or 17 times.Andi Hedrick (Andi Hedrick) A car-lover's community for ultimate access & unrivaled experiences.JOIN NOW Hearst Owned (Hearst Owned)You Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State