For the last couple of months (because I am a pathetically slow reader) I’ve been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This doesn’t connect to anything to the article, but I just wanted to make some small talk before moving on to something important. If you ever see a car like this…buy it.
Use man maths, rationalize the purchase as an investment, say that you’re doing it for altruistic principles, I don’t care. This car needs a place to be safe, to be protected from the hordes. Hordes that will not think twice about making it their next stanceworks project by some (dis)tasteful camber and silly wheels.
Or a drift car. Which I’ve really got nothing against of but I’ve always imagined them being made from either a factory fresh car, which means there’s a ready available supply of them yet, or from an absolute crapcan made into something amazing by sheer ingenuity and lots and lots of ballsiness.
The FC Mazda RX-7, especially in award-winning Turbo II guise as this beautiful example shot and uploaded to the Cohort by William Rubano, is a pretty good base to make a drift car. Later models would get a bump to 200 horsepower, but when this was introduced to the public at the Chicago Auto Show, it was still just a 40-horse bump over its naturally aspirated brother in the lineup. And with only 1,291 kilograms to move about and a 50/50 weight distribution, it was enough.
When new, they’d do 60 in 6.7 seconds and a top speed on the right side of 140 MPH. That put it around the same specs as the much more expensive Porsche 944S and made it quite a bit faster than the 924S, which was more on par with the normal RX-7 when it came to performance.
As far as the interior was concerned…unmistakably Japanese would be the description to most accurately describe it. It’s actually somewhat more interesting than other Japanese interiors to me because of the orange-on black dials. For many years I’ve associated orange-on-black dials and A/C faceplates with Nissan. So to see that color scheme on the RX-7 was one of those things that would make you go “Huh.”
The FC-Generation RX-7 would last until 1991 when it was replaced by a much more ambitious successor. Sure, the entire 11-year run of FD’s didn’t even match the sales volume that the FC had manage in the U.S in a single year. But it was much more of a flagship with its sensuous curves and twin-turbo rotaries for propulsion. This one, again thanks to drifters, rarity, pop culture and the fact that it’s just such a damn good car, is very sought after and generally commands the same high prices as the likes of the Mk IV Supra. But that doesn’t mean that the FC is unappealing to modders.
So this one, with its shiny paint and all the signs that it hasn’t lived a particularly stressful life, could quickly be snapped by someone looking for a very solid base. So I have to repeat the urging I made to you dear reader. If you ever see a car like this on the street, with a For Sale sign, buy it; save it from becoming a base. Then, in a couple of years, you can feel pride in having taken care of it so well as well as the fact that you seem to have the only one that’s still stock.
Good point, but that is not my mission. My next auto project will be an utterly worthless car with no collector value that needs preservation for posterity, not protection from ricers. My short list is:
Triumph Spitfire MK3
1965 Studebaker
1939 Dodge
Also, I’ve bought unwanted sports cars twice with poor results:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1962-triumph-tr4-know-when-to-hold-em/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1985-mazda-rx-7-reality-steps-in/
And just in case I lose my sanity and need a Gen2 RX7, the guy in the next cubicle has one that has languised in his mothers garage for 15 years.
Congratulations on actually reading ZAMM, I think slow is the best way to do it. I like to read the last two pages occasionally.
Never realized it before, but the interior….in particular the dashboard looks very much like the 1st generation Probe.
To me, these RX-7s walk a fine line between beautifully simple and bland.
I’m probably crazy/stupid, but I really want an RX-7 convertible. Folks tell me that at 6 foot 4 I would be too tall to fit in one, and with the top down I’d probably be looking OVER the top of the windshield header at traffic lights.
You probably would, Howard. I’m 6’7″ and sold cars for my dad’s Mazda dealership when these cars were new. To drive them around the lot I had to open the sunroof and stick my head out the top.
Got quite a few funny looks from the staff when I did that.
Could use some new rims though.
The 93-94 Ford Probe wheels look good on this RX7.
I thought that’s what those were. I didn’t realize what good-looking rims they were when they were on the Probe.
I remember this generation RX-7. I had a friend who had an RX-7 convertible. She loved driving it.
Gerardo, you win the BTOSICC (Best Two Opening Sentences In Curbside Classic) for 2016. 😉
I totally get your point. The idea of saving a car from a potentially undesirable fate was one of the things that caused me to buy my Volvo 780. Not a candidate for drifting or stance (though I’ve seen that treatment on some rather unlikely machinery), but it was a $2000 Volvo with less than 200K on the odometer. That’s still in the danger zone where someone could have bought it as a daily or semi-beater, driven it until it died, and scrapped it. I couldn’t let that happen.
Of course, life being life, it’s sat in my driveway for the past 8 months and moved only twice. But, hey, at least I have good intentions. 🙂
These FC RX-7s do get completely overshadowed by the gorgeous FD, but they’re nice cars. Getting pretty rare too–I definitely see more 944s than I do FCs, which is probably the opposite of the original sales numbers.