[Jim Klein’s COAL series was exceptional in its diversity, technical details and just Jim’s passion for his many cars. His series first ran in 2013, when a good number of you may not have been around. if you were, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy re-living it. So here’s the kick-off to our first COAL Gold series. Normally this will run later on Sundays, but our regularly scheduled Sunday COAL didn’t make it this week, so this will stand in its place. PN)
The calendar said late 1985, the view out of my window said Southern California (unlike this car and view). The day I passed my driver’s license test I handed my dad $1500 cash for the car which he had bought used two years prior for $3000. The car was a 1979 Metallic Blue on Blue 5-Speed Mazda 626 coupe with about 55,000 miles on it, and it was all mine. Why my dad had bought a 2-door coupe as primary family transport for the four of us will forever remain a mystery, but I was just happy he chose it over the beige Toyota Corona that was also in the running. Maybe he knew it would end up as mine.
Anyway, the car: The 626 (along with the RX-7) was introduced for the 1979 model year in the US. My car came with the same 13” aluminum rims as that year’s RX-7 – (the wheels looked a lot like those on a Ferrari Dino to my teenage delight), a 5-speed stick, and the same 2-liter, SOHC 80hp engine as all 626’s of that vintage. Interestingly (to me) in not-very-scientific side-to-side testing against my buddy’s 1980 240SX with a more powerful 100hp engine, the 626 kept up surprisingly well. This engine powered all 626’s through 1982, until the newer, more streamlined FWD 626 appeared for the 1983 model year.
Brakes were discs in front, drums in back. Steering was recirculating ball (who else still used this except MB?) and suspension was struts in front, solid (but driven) axle in the rear with coil springs. The ride was pretty good; it more or less went around corners, albeit with a lot of body roll. Tires on the coupe were 187/70-13 (!); sedans had skinnier rubber IIRC.
Performance – Not bad, enough to get me into trouble with the law, but not enough to kill myself with. Rear-drive, so while SoCal was mostly dry, on the rainy days I had a lot of fun learning to powerslide, using opposite lock, and generally trying to emulate the antics of Ari and Hannu that we occasionally lucked into on late night ESPN. On dry days, making high speed runs either along Mulholland Drive or through Kanan Dume Road were a blast.
I did one auto-cross with it my first year in college, my pre-track prep consisted of inflating the tires to about 45psi and practicing side-stepping the clutch at full throttle. Let’s just leave it with me saying I did one auto-cross with it…Top speed (measured very late at night with a co-driver and another guy looking backwards out the rear window for the law) measured in at 106mph on a flat stretch of the 101 near Thousand Oaks.
Interior – Generally a comfortable place to be (well, in front anyway), the backseats were somewhat cramped with a low roofline. The 4-door version was better in this regard as the roof is higher. Dash was laid out nice and logical and the ‘79’s even had the 120mph speedometer which changed to 85mph in ’80. The steering wheel, like the wheels, was straight out of the RX-7, with black metal spokes. The seats were cloth (well, they were at one time, the SoCal sun took their toll and the fabric literally was falling off in strips by the time the car was six years old.) A set of faux-sheep-skins (in blue!) and a blanket over the backseat fixed all of that.
Exterior – Great shape (to my then-16-year old eyes) – in 1981 the 626 was facelifted on the outside, and looked a little more modern with an egg crate grille and black rubber bumpers vs. the original chrome ones. The wraparound back window was nice and visibility was great. The European version for some reason has a different front end and a sunken hood that looks inferior to my eyes. The coupes look much better than the sedans which always looked a bit too stodgy and formal to my eyes.
Reliability – Well, let’s just say it became predictable. The brake pads needed replacing literally every 10k miles, the clutch every 30k, and the head gasket at 60k and 120k. However, I BEAT on that car and it did way better than it had any right to. Oh, and something in the transmission started making a rattling noise that never went away. My dad and I took the gearbox apart in the garage and found that it was a needle bearing that was pitted, however over time it had also pitted the shaft it was attached to. When we found out the price of a replacement shaft, we said forget it, put a new needle bearing in, put it all back together and back in the car. A couple of thousand miles later the noise came back due to the shaft now damaging the bearing and I just lived with it.
In the end I sold it with about 125,000 miles on it to another college kid after almost three years of ownership and 70,000 or so miles with me behind the wheel, and looked forward to my new acquisition…. But that’s a story for another Sunday.
Those things were good cars far better than the FWD models that followed.
Nice ride! Almost completely forgot about this generation of the 626. The coupes did look good, and the RX-7 bits were a cool touch. Always liked these.
This reminds me that, once upon a time, Mazda was actually competitive..
The silhouette makes me think BMW coupe, but I like it. The rear 3/4 view is very attractive.
They were good looking, mine that I wrote about here was a ’79, I slightly preferred the ’81 facelift, it got an eggcrate grille and slightly more streamlined rubber bumpers.
In profile, it reminds me more of a Mercedes C107 SLC with the rear window louvers amputated. Something about the stance.
Nice write-up on a car that has almost completely disappeared. Look forward to the next installments.
Almost, im fortunate to have one
Great write up and amazing read, thank you
Great COAL and welcome aboard!
I worked at Mazda circa 1987 as a service guy and we saw a lot of these cars; mostly for regular maintenance. They were really good, honest designs. There were no obvious design compromises in these cars at all. Having come from wrenching on American stuff for years, it was very refreshing to see a car maker not specifically trying to screw the customer.
Here in the Great White North, the head gasket issue didn’t happen much due to our sub-zero summers.
Such a clean, and attractive design. Rare for any car of the time, much less a Japanese car.
Always had a soft spot for these cars. At the time, they were the best looking Japanese coupe, bar none. And they were well received by the press and the public. They handled decidedly better than average; quite decent, considering the times (the midst of the Brougham Era).
I bought a sedan version for $300 in 2001 for son Ed, his first car. Oddly, it was a Luxury Edition, with PS, A/C, but still the slick-shifting 5 speed. He to practiced the fine art of RWD slides with it.
The 2 liter four was the final evolution of Mazda’s SOHC four that went back to the early sixties. Back then, it was a rather advanced design, and started out with 1500 cc. To get to 2000cc, they had to put a really long stroke on it, which made it very torquey, but it didn’t exactly like to rev. A perfect motor for the Mazda pickup. And a tough motor too.
If it had been a coupe, I would have kept it after Ed was done with it. Would have made a nice project car. I still love the lines on that coupe.
Yup, that long stroke motor was practically impossible to kill but was not the smoothest or quietest powerplant ever installed in a car!
Here’s my (long departed) ’81 626. Bought in ’86 with, oddly enough, a blown head gasket. Really liked that car; I’m surprised no one made mention that this car is a REAL hardtop.
Yeah the head gasket thing sucked, I also remember blowing more than one coolant hose, both events are probably connected. Over 100 degree weather in SoCal with a teenage driver without much if any mechanical sympathy will do that I suppose…My dad and I fixed the headgasket both times in our driveway, it seemed to have lost a bit of power after the first one, but lost even more the second time, which is another reason I sold it. As Paul and others have said above, the coupe really was a very pretty design and still looks good to this day.
That was my first though, how a hardtop can make anything look great. Other than that, this looks very similar to a Euro market Ford Granada, a car pretty universally disliked. But chop off 2 doors and a B pillar and damn if it doesnt look great.
That’s funny. I always thought the first generation EuronGranada was one of the nicest designs out there, especially the wagon.
I was thinking it looked more like the second gen Euro Granada, which I still think is a pretty clean design. I think maybe I’m confusing the universal dislike of the second gen Ford Scorpio with the Granada.
Yeah that last Scorpio looked like something from the bottom of the sea with those googley headlights!
I remember reading rumours in 80s car magazines that Ford did the 626’s exterior design. Always wondered if there was any truth in that.
It is surprising how many of us had one of these, great little cars, much better than the Great Little Car. My COAL can be found here. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-mazdas-of-a-lifetime-part-1/
I do disagree about the 626 having the same parts as the RX-7, it was the RX-7 that got 626 parts since it was loosely based on the 626. Yes I do know that Mazda period advertising sold the story the other way but that was marketing. The RX-7’s sales would have likely suffered if they promoted it as having the soul of a sedan vs selling the 626 as having the soul of a sports car.
I had a college professor who owned one of these, though a sedan. It seemed like quite a nice car in the time or two that I rode in it. He seemed quite happy with it.
I agree that this coupe was a very attractive car, and I like it even better now than I did then. Nice writeup as well, look forward to more.
Thank you for all of the nice comments, I am working on next weeks installment right now! The hardest part is finding actual pictures of some of them instead of just googling.
You probably know this already, but if not be sure to ask Paul for photos. He likely has a few thousand of just about any exact make and model and year and color.
Also, welcome to the club! We meet every Wednesday at the Elks Lodge for drinks and cigars.
Yep I did, Paul came through in stellar fashion! None of these pix are mine, I had a couple of snapshots that I think ended up too low resolution / car too small. The color is right, mine was that bright metallic blue with those alloys and chrome bumpers and window trim. Interior was blue though, not the black of the picture here. Below is a pic of me autocrossing it in my dorm parking lot with the Cal Poly Sports Car Club. Weirdly enough I have only autocrossed twice in my life, with this car, my first, and recently again with my most recent car, which I suppose you will see in about 40 weeks!
A word on the origins of the RX-7…
The RWD GLC was more or less a simple rebody of the Familia/808/RX-3. The RX-7 had been an evolution of that platform, with the rear suspension changed from a leaf setup to coil springs and a Watt’s link.
My understanding from what I’ve heard from Mazda experts over the years was that the 626 was essentially a lengthened version of the RX-7, though IIRC it lacks the Watts link. The car had been designed to accept the rotary but never got one from the factory. It’s an easy swap, though, and if I ever found one of the hardtop coupes in good condition I would certainly pick it up and do the rotary swap.
I sure enjoyed my 82 626 with manual. Probably my favorite car I’ve ever owned.
Except for those pesky head gaskets. Got it at 70k and went through 2 gaskets in the next 40k. Simply could not afford to risk a third failure and had to trade it in. The rest of the car was just solid.
I’ve always liked these and thought they were very nice looking indeed. Extremely rare to see one these days unfortunately.
It’s funny how us car guys are (usually) on the same page when a forgotten car like this comes up. Better than the FWD models that followed. Check. Remembering that it had a solid axle with coil springs and recirculating ball steering. Check. Remembering the shared parts with the first RX7. Check.
The coupe was a real beauty when it came out and was marked up by dealers out here in Calif. I preferred the 626 model name over the 6. I think names like the 6 and 3 are dumb. Like in a sentence saying “I have a 6” . Is that a car? An engine? Should it be spelled out Six if not preceded by Mazda?
Thanks Jim. Assuming you are a Walter Rohrl fan you might like this video, Eine Runde Nordschleife mit Walter Röhrl.
Hey, thanks for the video, that was great! Just as good as all his other ones in Audi’s and other Porsche’s and even the old Opel and Fiat days. Walter is the man!
We had bought the 626 used from a guy in either Thousand Oaks or Agoura, not sure where he bought it but I used to buy my parts at the Mazda dealer in Woodland Hills.
Love it.
Fantastic-looking cars in coupe format, it’s a real shame the majority of them have departed. A true hardtop and just really nice proportions. Sounds like yours gave you good service as well! Mazdas of this era seemed to hold up well.
My first car was a 82 luxury 626, man reading your article really makes me miss it. I have owned several Mazda’s over the years now, including several rx-7’s (current dd – 87 s4) really wish I had my old coupe to throw a rotary into!
Wow Paul, I woke up at 5am for some reason and clicked over here to read importamation’s most recent entry and instead was stunned to see this, my first COAL! I had no idea beyond us briefly discussing the possibility in Detroit over the summer, thanks for the slightly early birthday present!
Back when these first ran, my screen name was WalterRohrl, some of my comments are that way and some have my real name depending on which device I logged in with at the time.
Also, your timing is impeccable, as two days ago we purchased what I suppose is our 46th vehicle! So you have another installment coming down the road but it appears I have almost a year to write it which will be perfect as I can be a bit of a slow mover…
Anyway, this was the first thing I ever wrote for CC and the start of a fun new hobby for me, I’ve since met several of the commenters from my COALs at the meetups which puts their comments in a whole different light for me now as I can picture them and hear their voices when I read what they wrote. I’ve certainly become more humbled over the few years since I wrote these by the sheer knowledge of our readers and contributors.
Thank You Paul and I hope everyone enjoys this series (even if it’s the second time for some)
Ditto on the nice surprise. From this vantage point it’s been good to re-read this as knowing you has put this in a different light! No doubt the next 40-odd will be the same way.
I also have suspicions on which Klein-mobile went away, too.
Happy early birthday!
Are you sure you won’t have more than one new car to write up by the end of this series? 🙂
Having gotten to know you puts a whole new perspective on these.
My first new car was a 1980 626 coupe. It was a pseudo-special anniversary edition (believe for Mazda’s 10th year selling in the US) that was a nice shade of red with herringbone-tweedy, striped upholstery. Those front seats, incidentally, were remarkably comfortable. It was a decent handler but a bit slow… like so many cars at that time, good steering, nice gearbox/clutch, and in 50,000 miles it had no issues at all. Oddly, it sat on the dealer’s lot for months after we traded it for an ’82 Accord sedan. My sister in law eventually bought it for a steal and ran it up to about 90,000, again with no issues.
I liked these a great deal when they were newish, and to drive they were a real step up from something like a concurrent Corona. Save for that indisputably tough engine, which was rather unrefined and which in all its incarnations developed a smoking habit by motoring middle age (say 100,000 miles).
A question for Jim Klein. When I looked in the rear view mirror of the only coupe I drove, I questioned my sobriety, as the back window made everything following look like a giggle palace reflection, widened, flattened and a touch curved. Looking forwards again, I realised relievedly it was the window that was drunk and not me. Did yours have this effect?
That 70k of miles by Young Jim Klein was probably like 200k miles by Mature Jim Klein. I shudder to think of some of the abuse I heaped on a couple of my early cars.
Still a beautiful car. One of my favorites for it’s simplicity, like the Audi 100.
In their road test of this car, “Road & Track” magazine remarked that the 626 is “what to buy when the dealer is out of RX-7’s.”
These were attractive cars, harmonious and solid-looking. To my eye at the time there was a derivative quality to the design, but it was well done nonetheless.
Nice to see your first COAL, great first car for a 16 year old. Too bad the head gaskets were problematic, the styling is really nice, a lot of Japanese cars of the era got beat hard with the ugly stick.
I recall these good looking cars from back then. In 1980 I had bought a new Honda Civic wagon but had a classmate who had one of these. It wasn’t until 1986 that I got my first new 626. Still like the 626 very much and have two even now. Spent 5 hours under my wife’s changing the water pump, entire timing set, dust seals and cleaning everything along the way from top down to cross members. The head gasket issue, though, would have probably driven me crazy on the early 626.
Wow – I don’t know the last day I saw an RWD 626 of any kind – IIRC they were called the Mazda Montrose in England when they first came out. The first generation FWD ones have all but disappeared, and the ’88 on second generation FWD ones are getting very rare too. A neighbor of mine had an ’84 sedan in fantastic condition for many years (he replaced it with a Corolla in 2006) and it’s amazing how big cars have become over the last few decades. The current Mazda3 is probably bigger than these 626s.
how good are the side window seals on these? And can someone explain like I’m five recirculating ball steering please?
…and this is the 626 coupé I mentioned above, finally arriving in my neck of the woods. I know old Japanese iron has gone up in price, but I’d need to get this under $5k to make the rotary swap worth it.
Yes, I know, people are big into originality now, but this Mazda engine was long in the tooth by this point, and I’ll always have a soft spot for the Wankel in my heart.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1979-Mazda-626/163090059421?hash=item25f8ecd09d:g:TTcAAOSwxupa0-k~&vxp=mtr&autorefresh=true
I bought an ’81 626 a month ago with 250k miles on it. Flew from Cleveland to Portland, and drove it home ( through Cali and the SW ) 3,600 miles. It’s going to transform into a 24 Hours of Lemons race car this year. My favorite Japanese design of it’s time.