1993 Mazda RX-7 - Vexing and Beguiling.

Of all of the fabulous Japanese sports cars that came ashore here in the late 1980's and early 1990's, none was as vexing as Mazda's third generation RX-7. Our subject here is a 1993. 

Vexing and beguiling. I mean, seriously. Look at this thing. It's simply gorgeous. What's more,  these cars could perform as well as many exotic cars for about the same cost as a 1993 Corvette. So, what could possibly be so vexing?

Well, plenty since with these cars Mazda continued their much-ballyhooed infatuation with the Felix Wankel inspired rotary engine. On paper, rotary engines have it going on. Impossibly smooth and capable of as good if not superior performance to piston engines two to three times their size, their being so compact and light, engineers were able to place them far behind the front wheels giving the RX a near 50/50 weight balance. By the way, the "R" in RX is for "rotary" and the "X" is Mazda's designation for "sports car". "Mazda" itself means "light".

Problem is these engines have inherent thermal inefficiencies that lead to excessive fuel consumption and poor tail pipe emissions. What's more they require more service than piston engines do; many owners didn't keep up with them. On these third generation RX-7's, Mazda also added not one but two turbochargers that worked sequentially to increase horsepower and torque. Wonderful. Thing is, it added complexity to an already finicky engine. No wonder that when these things came out of warranty so many of them popped up in used car lots. They then got hovered up by collectors who stashed them away.

In fairness, Mazda used the rotary engine for all the right reasons; it just made all RX' unreliable. And that's a shame since otherwise they were superbly engineered automobiles.

  

Not to mention the third generation RX was beautifully styled like no RX before nor after it was. It's its styling and rarity that has propped up the values of these cars to stratospheric heights. Our well preserved '93 here with just 9,000 miles on it is for sale with an asking price of more than $45,000. Save for perhaps an Acura NSX of this vintage, no other Japanese sports car would command that kind of money. Maybe a pristine, low mileage ZR-1 Corvette would too but who knows. All I know is that I hope who ever buys this car knows a good mechanic who specializes in rotary engines.