This car has a brown velour interior. Checkerboard, between deep pile and shallow. And the driver’s side is still intact. It is a very clean example, except it’s covered in dust. It’s a one point five generation Mazda RX-7, and it lives in a brown apartment.
Above is the first of the series from 1978; SA22C. The rear lights are smaller, and the slight concave arch gives the body some tension where the rest of it is sleek. The 1980 FB body update lost that arch, instead got more flush with larger taillights.
My own relationship with the RX-7 is brief. A girlfriend’s brother had one in this condition, sitting in his backyard. Never got finished.
Sleek yes. Fastback 924 but.
The bumpers of the first series had flattened black end caps.
The 1.5 show got flusher bumpers more in keeping with the rest of the body.
Wish they’d kept that arch though.
It’s rarer on these streets than the 924 – most having been cannibalised for the 12A & 13B rotaries and the rest captive to dreams unfulfilled. The P-plate makes this probably her first or second car. She lets it stay dusty, and that just adds to its charm.
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I find that the facelift really modernized the styling on these to the point that the newer ones look at least a decade newer than the older ones. Brown did seem to be a popular color for the 7, but it’s a shame we never got the green on the first ones over here, that’s a great shade.
Soon enough these will come into their own as marvelous period pieces, and prices will rise, somehow with RX-7’s it seems that they newest ones remained the most in demand and now the second generation is seeing more interest but the first is still under the radar for some reason.
From my teen-aged perspective, I thought the RX-7 looked beautiful and fresh in 1979. By the time the Supra and Starion arrived in ’82 and ’83, I thought they possessed a visual design energy the RX-7 didn’t have. In fact, I found the stock RX-7 was starting to look generic. I found some of the race prepared versions of the Mazda looked cool. Significantly more virility with mild dams, flares, and wings.
I find the second gen the least appealing – way too much like a 944. Agree that the better bumpers outweigh the lack of arch.
Nice homage to an ever-rarer little gem. I’m a bit torn about the arch on the rear; it does add personality. The 1.5 became a bit anonymous back there. Either way, it was always a pleasure to see these in traffic and on the streets. Nice to know there’s still a decent sampling your way.
Here’s a sibling to this brown RX-7 from 10,000 miles away. I saw this last year at a car show here in Virginia — I associate 1st generation RX-7s with the colors silver and blue for some reason, yet in this example, I found the brown to be very alluring. This car was also in outstanding original condition:
These were great cars, and now, 40 years later, appreciating how small Mazda (Toyo Kogyo) was compared to Toyota and Nissan/Datsun, let alone the Detroit three, I find them even more impressive.
I always thought of the RX-7 as the reincarnation of the original 240Z, for those who missed out back in 1971, and the original Miata as a modern MGB that was also a proper car.
And in both cars, I think the debut version was the best version–certainly the best looking IMO. At least the RX-7 gen 1.5 was available with a much more powerful motor.
Peak Mazda was 1978-1993 for me.
The RA of the dorm I lived in Freshman and Sophomore years of college drove one of these. It was pretty new and I recall thinking that it was one of the most attractive cars being built around 1978-79. My impression is that had it been powered by a conventional piston engine, a lot more would have survived. The rotary was a specialty item when new and has not become any less so in the intervening years.
We have maybe one daily driver early RX7 in our town that I see regularly, but I’m not sure I was even aware of the Gen 1 – 1.5 refresh. I’ll keep an eye out for it and try to remember what the changes were. When I was Showroom Stock road racing in the late seventies, these were two classes above my Fiesta and my primary interest in them was to make sure they didn’t show up in my rear view mirror, meaning I was about to get lapped. Locally, they seemed about the same pace as the Datsun 280ZX; the early Fox Mustang turbo’s were competitive further East but weren’t popular on the track in California.
My dear Don, one photograph in one place could be considered fortunate. Two more in different locations looks like stalking, and I must say, if you are arrested, it might prove imprudent to state in your defence that you were only trying to capture the tension in the body expressed by the arch in her rear.
I prefer the first series, if I am forced to have any preference for the RX-7 (which I don’t, the styling was never quite finished to me). The cleaness gets lost in progression, the last S 3’s in particular bordering on the ornate: with two tone and gaudy wheels and mouse’s furs interiors, I fully expected them to get DiNoc outside and genuine fake walnuts inside if they lived another year.
It’s a well-off P-plater who owns this little brown tug, or, perhaps, not. They are very fond of a drink, RX’s, and at Australian prices, that might account for the dust.
P platers are hampered in their choices of car by the power to weight ratio making these rotaries ideal, these are getting rarer on NZ roads they get stripped of the engines for transplants and the mounting hardware bolts into RWD 323s for rotary upgrades plenty of JDM Savannajs were around but they are just as scarce now as original NZ delivered cars, Ford racecar pilot Alan Moffat raced these things back in the day, Amaroo park was a favourite veue to watch him at in those far off days and Kiwi Rod Millen had a fast RX7 in the US,, Collectable even now if you can find an original.
5 friends of mine and I went in a Winnebago to the “Pepsi Challenge” 24 hour endurance race at Daytona the first year the first RX-7s raced there, in green and white livery if I remember right. Late 70s or early 80s? Can’t remember if one placed, but they did make a splash. We had a hell of a good time.
I learned a lot about licensing standards in Australia and P-platers from this article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_licensed_driver_plate
Sounds like a very reasonable system.
Speaking of brown I stopped at my local ARCO today and what happens to be next to me and then what pulls up behind me in the 91 626. Next to me on the other side was a powder blue 1973 Mark IV with 88,000 miles. I asked and talked to the driver. Sorry to say we got closer than 6 feet. Pulling up behind me was a 1985 RX7 in brown. Talked to the woman in the car and while a little rough around the edges it was all original. She had noticed the 626 also.