I couldn’t resist these two sitting behind the Sports Car shop, awaiting further ministrations in their service department. The MGA seems to be in greater need than the RX-7, and it brings home some vivid memories.
Especially this empty engine compartment. My brother bought a very tired and rotting ’57 MGA for his first car, and it was a painful trail by fire. Seems like just about everything failed, including the engine. The solution: he found an engine in the junkyard from a Metropolitan, which used the same basic thing, minus the two SU carbs. Watching him and a friend carry out the swap was a preview of several swaps I would undertake myself in years to come. That doesn’t look all that hard.
The Metropolitan engine lasted a few more months before a head gasket blew, by which time my father decreed it needed to leave the driveway. It got replaced by a 3-year old ’66 VW, which was the antithesis of the MGA in many way, most of all in its durability and reliability.
It sure was a blast riding with him on hot summer evenings; with those low-cut doors and my long arms, I probably could have touched the pavement. And as the sills rotted away, the gap below the door soon made it possible to watch the pavement go by.
I was only 15 and unlicensed, but one night when he (and my parents) was gone I took it out myself. I can still feel the throb of the engine in my hand from that stub of a stick shift, missing here. The redline says 6,000 rpm; no way that tired old lump would have done that; 4,000 was about as far as I dared push it. But then these long-stroke fours were anything but revvers. And the steering lived up to its reputation: very direct and lots of feel. In other words, the polar opposite of the power steering in the ’65 Coronet wagon.
I had a blast taking out to the Gunpowder River and back. I did worry about it breaking down; that would have been a problem, in more ways than one. And I finally confessed to him some years back.
This is a 1600 MKII, the final version of the A. The engine was a bit bigger and had a couple more horsepower, but it was getting long in tooth by the early ’60s. The MGB couldn’t come fast enough.
I drove my friend’s RX-7 a few times, and in certain ways it reminded me of the A, in terms of its steering and stick shift, but the engines couldn’t have been more different. The rotary needed to rev, and had very little down in the cellar.
This is the desirable GSL-SE version, with the larger and more powerful 13B engine. Faster, and a bit more torque, but still a revver, like all of them.
Lots of fun, both of them.
Well…at least the MGA didn’t have a Miata parked next to it.
Probably because a Miata would still be in use and not at the shop…just sayin’.
A comp would have been more pronounced.
I love the first generation Rx-7s I owned. Lovely cars all around. I knew a lot of people look down on the steering box but if properly adjusted it is not all that bad.
I have not had a chance to sample a MG A but I did own a MG B briefly. Nice car but it felt less special than the Triumph Spitfires I had.
This particular model RX-7, the GSL-SE, got a fast-ratio, variable power-assist steering box. Not perfect, but a nice upgrade from the “standard” first-gen RX-7 steering system. Like the engine (13B from 12A) and intake (fuel injection from carbureted), a measurable gain. If one is going first-gen RX-7, this is the one to get or to drive, despite the added complexity. Mazda took the notorious trailing throttle oversteer out of this one, too. Instead you get “aggressive throttle oversteer”, which is mostly impossible in the rest of the first-gen RX-7s. The “simple” rotary in its finest form, by far. Later generations of RX-7 got complex and finicky, despite “better” performance. Nice in their own way, but the GSL-SE is the ultimate simple rotary “brick”, with the most and biggest smiles per mile, IMHO. In stock form, it crosses the threshold of “almost enough horsepower and torque” to “just the right amount” of each, at least by 1984 standards.
By the time the RX-7 came out in ’78 plenty of folks were gun shy about rotary engines; perhaps rightly so. Imagine a world in which the rotary was optional in this body shell alongside a peppy 4-valve, 4-cylinder engine of 1.8-2.0 liters. I wonder if sales would have tripled. But Mazda would never have done it; the RX-7 simply *had* to be a rotary.
A first-gen RX-7 retrofitted with a first-gen Miata engine would be a sweet ride, in the nimble but not high-horsepower mode of both cars. I am surprised more haven’t been cobbled together, but then perhaps no one with a Miata has an interest in anything other than keeping going with his Miata.
Separately, this is the final version MGA with a special engine (twin-cam), and the final version first-gen RX-7, also with a special engine. Both in red. Someone out there has a nice sense of symmetry going, or maybe dumb luck and coincidence is the culprit. Lots of change at work in 20 to 25 years.
This is not a Twin Cam MGA. Those were only built in small numbers from 1958-1960. They are very rare and much more valuable now. But they had lots of serious issues when new, hence sales dropped quickly. It was also much more expensive than the basic A.
My apologies. Seeing the “final version” and “a bit more horsepower” (which I understand was only a “bit” more in the TC, for all the effort), I figured this was a TC.
The 1500 had 68 or 72 hp. The 1600 had 80. The TC had 109 hp; so quite a bit more. It was very fast for the time.
See, the irony of saying this is that the first-gen RX-7 was pretty much precisely what people had been saying for years Mazda should do with the rotary engine. “Stop sticking it in compacts people expect to do 30 mpg or midsize family cars where it’ll feel gutless! Put it in a nice sports car chassis, where you can take advantage of the size and weight to push the engine way back for better balance, and where people are gonna run it through the gears and kick the tail out sometimes rather than slogging along with automatic!” Mazda finally did just that (JDM Cosmo and Luce not withstanding), and as Dutch notes, the GSL-SE was arguably its purest expression.
With a four-cylinder reciprocating engine, it would have been a completely different car — basically just a 626 coupe. Which was fine (the early ’80s 626 was a decent enough car), but it was not an RX-7.
Having owned a 1979 Mazda 626 Coupe with the 2liter I-4 producing 80hp in the mid-80s, it was a great car but it was certainly not an RX-7.
They sold almost half a million of them so I’d call that pretty successful.
A lovely pair, I owned an RX-7 and rode in an MGA a few times.
I would expect that despite being 25 years older it’s far easier to get parts and service for the MGA in 2023.
The availability of “new old stock” and freshly manufactured replacement parts for old British cars, at least the more popular older sports cars, is astoundingly good and complete, right down to replacement body shells for certain ones. For most Japanese cars, except for a handful of popular sports cars, everything is NLA (“no longer available”). Even icons such as the original Datsun Roadster and 240Z only have certain parts available. Mazda, being the odd engine out, has almost no parts availability of any sort, barring the Miata, which is, again, only certain pieces. Mechanics capable of proper rotary engine work are getting awfully few and are aging out.
I am restoring a messy old RX-3, but only because I have boxes and boxes of spares, squirreled away for decades. Without those spares, fergiddaboudit. Sadly, Japanese car parts go for so much, individually, on eBay, that many somewhat worthy cars just get parted out and scrapped.
A nice pic, a cute Stephanie and your dog together giving great background human and animal counterpoint interest to the two sports cars. So what caught her attention and her diverted gaze, as you focused on the cars? Paul, thanks for a delightful pic, and definitely worthy of a Peter Egan R&T type of inside back cover comment.
She’s looking at the back of the Sports Car Shop; presumably there was something in the service area that caught her attention. It’s always chock full of wonderful eye candy.
That’s a lovely RX-7 GSL-SE, probably my favorite year and specification of any RX. They may have needed to “rev”, but the revving and sound/feel it generated was so unlike any other “normal” car with a piston engine.
Both those cars are very collectable over here and neither are common Im not sure where all the RX7s& Savannahs went there were loads of them about not that long ago
MGAs were always a bit rare I see more now than when they were just used cars, a regular version shouldnt be hard to keep on the roads they have a B series engine that stayed in production forever in various capacities and eventually gained 5 main bearings the rest of it is BMC Oxbridge and you can still get new parts for those.
Didn’t know the US received an injected 13B in this model. I think the JDM model did, who also had the choice of a 12A turbo.
The MGA is completely unappealing to me
Most first-gen RX-7s came with the carbureted 12A engine, worldwide. For the last two model years, Japan got an optional fuel injected 12A turbo, and the US got the optional fuel injected 13B (non-turbo). Both are highly prized in rotary circles, these days. That’s it for the first generation. Everything after that for the RX-7, second generation and forward, was fuel injected 13B, turbo or non-turbo, of fundamentally different specification from the first-gen engines, with no real interchange capability, and very few parts in common. The first-gen RX-7 engine was roughly internally the same as all Mazda rotary engines, for U.S. model years 1974 through 1985. Basic, solid, reliable (as rotary engines go). Earlier and later were distinct generations of engines.
In the mid 1970’s I was given an MGA sans engine, it wasn’t very rusty being a Los Angeles car, I shoveled it full of dirt and planted flowers in it….
The last ones were actually 1622 CC IIRC, they had a better cylinder head too that resisted cracking and had bigger valves to breathe better .
I put one, after heavily massaging it onto the original 1500 CC engine in my ’59 Metropolitan and it flowed -so- well the stock Zenith carby couldn’t supply enough fuel, I put a Weber 32 MM on it with hand massaged main jets and that car flew .
It turns out there’s a simple reason all those ‘A’ series BMC engines blew head gaskets, once I learned why I never had another one fail .
The ‘A’ series BMC engine used in the Morris Minors etc. was rather rev. happy compared to this MGA’s 1600 .
-Nate
Wonder how the MG would go with a 13B rotormotor…..? 🙂
Actually a 12A would probably be quite powerful enough, and half the weight…
Blasphemer!
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1973-mg-midget-squeezing-a-litre-into-a-pint-pot/
I don’t necessarily consider re powering blasphemy ~
If Mazda, like Nissan, used the same basic bell housing pattern and motor mounts I’d think the engine swap might be very do – able and worthy .
Mind you ~ I have had any difficulty making any BMC product go *much* faster than the brakes and suspension can handle .
-Nate
Hey it’s still an IC engine! Blasphemy would be making it electric.