O'Rourke and EMKA concentrated on sports car racing with brief interludes into British Formula One until 1985 when the team was broken up before returning again in 1991.
Following Steve O'Rourke's years of amateur auto racing, he had succeeded in entering the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans where he took a respectable 12th-place finish in a Ferrari 512BB.
In the same year, O'Rourke and EMKA also entered the British Formula One series for two races with a Williams FW07, scoring a third place at Thruxton Circuit.
For 1985 the EMKA ASTON-MARTIN was modified by Michael Cane Racing with design work being done by Richard Owen and continued support from Aston Martin.
O'Rourke and Needell took an eleventh-place finish at Le Mans which saw the entry briefly leading the race in the opening hours.
Joined by Guy Holmes, he would participate in the bulk of the 1996 BPR Global GT Series season, with best finishes of 18th at both Monza and Paul Ricard.
The duo would also be joined by Bill Auberlen for Le Mans, earning a fourth-place finish, O'Rourke's personal best.
The top GT class would be abandoned in 2000 making the team's McLaren illegal, so O'Rourke joined EMKA Racing with fellow British team GTC Competition and moved the duo to the international FIA GT Championship's lower N-GT class, running a new Porsche 911 GT3-R.
Mere days after the end of the FIA GT season, Steven O'Rourke would pass away in the United States due to a stroke.