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As soon as I think I’m over my obsession with the 3rd generation Mazda RX-7, or FD, a clip like this pops up and reminds me of all the reasons I fell in love with the elemental sports car as a 15-year-old.

It does get talky in parts, and the host makes much the same point articulated more astutely by Chris Harris—pining for a lower-power, full-engagement sports car instead of the mega-horsepower digital “robots” de rigeur nowadays—but the shots of the Spirit R blasting along the California coast are worth the occasional superfluous foray into familiar automotive history.

To state the obvious, it’s an achingly beautiful car. I honestly can’t think of a lovelier vehicle to emerge from Japan, and the knowledge of its (considerable) capability only strengthens the pull of its lines. As much as I wish the FD had been offered in the US for longer than three model years, I wonder sometimes if the shortness of its production run coupled with the powder-keg nature of its twin-turbocharged rotary don’t actually enhance its appeal. It’s so ephemeral, so uncompromising, both in its looks and in its accoutrements vis-a-vis the driver, so utterly irrational… We need cars like this; cars that don’t make a lick of sense “in the real world.” As much as I appreciate what Mazda attempted to do with the RX-8, with its suicide doors and livable back seat, those very concessions to practicality turn me off to it. I would “use” the RX-8’s compromises exactly once: As talking points to convince my wife that the car wasn’t a completely frivolous expenditure, and then bemoan their presence for the rest of my ownership experience. No, even if I had to sleep on the couch for a couple of weeks, give me the FD RX-7. Its purity is worth the pain.

Mazda’s 4-rotor, 2.6l, 700-hp R26B is the only engine by a Japanese manufacturer to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race outright. In doing so, Mazda scored an achievement that has always eluded such pillars of the Japanese racing scene as Nissan, Toyota and Honda.

The year was 1991, and Mazda had something to prove. Perennially stung by criticism of their signature Wankel engine as an unreliable gas guzzler, the automaker had long sanctioned factory entries into endurance racing series across the globe. And though Mazda had achieved a remarkable amount of success through the years in that form of racing, Le Mans stood as the unconquered peak, the title that would perhaps finally demonstrate, to the racing world at least, that the rotary engine deserved to taken seriously from a competition standpoint.

The ultimate incarnation of a long series of endurance-focused rotaries, the R26B built on the foundation laid by its 4-rotor predecessor the 13J-M, itself a variation of the 3-rotor 20B, and added a number of refinements. At its core, the R26B was a basic non-turbocharged rotary engine, but with racing-derived features like intake ports on the periphery of the rotor housings instead of on the side plates (as in all production Mazda rotaries), an arrangement that produced a great deal of overlap between the intake and exhaust “stroke” of the rotor but which allowed for much greater airflow potential at high rpm, where racing engines live.

Also, the R26B was fitted with steplessly variable intake runners, able to optimize intake length and thus airflow seamlessly for any engine state, as well as 3 spark plugs per rotor instead of the usual 2, promoting more uniform burn of the fuel-air mixture. The engine was capable of cranking out 900 hp at upwards of 10,000 rpm, but was detuned to “only” 700 at 9,000 rpm to in the interests of durability.

And it worked. Fitted to a durable, proven 787B prototype chassis and driven by the trio of Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler and Bertrand Gachot, the R26B vindicated Mazda’s efforts once and for all at Le Mans in 1991. Perhaps sweetest of all were the primary reasons for the win: Not power, where it was outclassed by the Jaguars and Mercedes running that year, but fuel economy and durability, two attributes which allowed the R26B-powered 787B to keeping lapping the circuit longer and shrug off failures that sidelined other teams. It’s an amazing engine, and Mazda is rightly proud of their success.

To see 1991 Le Mans winner Johnny Herbert driving his race-winning 787B just last year, click here. It’s a spine-tingling clip.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series examining unique and significant powerplants. Read the other installments here:

• Saab Variable Compression Engine
• Rolls-Royce Goshawk
• Mercedes-Ilmor 500I
• Napier Nomad
• Pratt & Whitney R-4360

I pine for this car. Yes, I do.

This is the car on which I cut my teeth mechanically. Before the red RX-7 came along I congratulated myself on being able to change a starter unassisted; afterward I would tackle almost anything with little hesitation (and in many cases, preparation).

It was another eBay purchase, February 2000. This was still before eBay Motors came along and the listing for this car was beyond terrible. Two lines of text and no picture, but the kicker was that it was located just down the road in Greensboro. Having a little extra saved up, Aaron and I made the two-hour round trip to check it out.

When we arrived we couldn’t believe our eyes. Except for a blown engine, the car was pristine, perfect, cherry—literally. The seller worked in an automotive paint shop and had painted the car himself with loving attention to detail. However, aside from his artistic talents with a paint gun, he was a stereotypical American auto enthusiast who, “didn’t know nothing ’bout no rotary engine.” Thus, when the engine blew, he was baffled. Aaron and I, being rotorheads, saw opportunity. We thanked him for his time and returned to Raleigh, intent on scooping it up.

And I did. No one else must have driven out to see the car since my bid was less than $300. The owner delivered the car the following week on a flatbed trailer, visibly bothered that his eBay sale hadn’t gone as well as he had hoped, but a man of his word.

So the plan was hatched. Between the black RX-7 with its strong engine but rusted-out northern chassis and the red RX-7 with its blown engine but sound body, I would make one complete and perfect little sports car. My dad was less than optimistic about my chances of success, having never attempted something as involved as an engine swap, but his skepticism just spurred me on. To shorten the story, I learned a lot, made a couple of time-consuming but non-terminal blunders along the way (keep grease away from the clutch disc!), and by early August, after about a month and a half of work, I fired up the good engine in the red car for the first time. That was an experience unto itself since the car had no exhaust but the manifold at the time and rotary engines create noise all out of proportion to their small displacement. Not only that, but I had squirted some automatic transmission fluid into the combustion chambers to lube the seals pre-startup, and the ensuing cloud from the burning ATF completely blanketed the cul-de-sac. But it ran, and ran well. I was ecstatic.

So where is it now? Why didn’t I keep it? The reasons sounded much more plausible at the time, but today I wish, oh how I wish I had reconsidered. After having the car for a few months and enjoying it thoroughly, for easily-preventable reasons the good engine ate an apex seal. Being in college at the time and in a bit of a temporary financial pinch, I somehow decided the car had to go. So in a fit of misdirection I put it up on eBay and sold it, with a blown engine, for $1500. I probably made money on the whole ordeal, but I still regret it.

The buyer arrived to haul it away the same way it had arrived in my parents’ driveway: On a flatbed trailer. From what I gathered, he was a Wankel enthusiast from somewhere around Goldsboro and planned to do a blow-through Weber turbo install. I never heard from him again after the car disappeared around the corner. Funny thing that’s never happened before or since: My mom witnessed the transaction and actually teared up as the red RX-7 was being trailered away. I didn’t quite know what to make of it then, and still don’t, really. I never knew she’d been so attached to it. If I had only known then how much I would long for it now, perhaps I would have been more sympathetic.

Editor’s note: This post is adapted from a “car history” post I wrote on an older blog of mine some years ago. Read the first installment of the two-part series here.

Acquired mid-October 1999, this was my first real project car. It also doubled as my first eBay purchase. On a whim while at the State Fair in Raleigh that fall, I decided to really go for this car. Aaron owned an ’86 model, the first year of the 2nd generation and a very different machine, albeit with the same “heart”—a rotary engine. I bought it in the days before eBay had a separate section of their site devoted solely to cars, so killer deals (read: bad listings) could be found by trolling the search fields regularly. Aaron happened upon the listing for the black RX-7 and tipped me off to it. There were no pictures and a very terse description of the car.

I won the auction with a bid of around $500. The car was in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. I talked my friend Jonathan into driving up there with me to retrieve the car. It wasn’t that difficult, seeing as how a friend of his (and unbeknownst to him at the time, his future wife) attended Messiah college nearby and he was eager to visit her. We drove the family minivan north through the night, stopping only for dinner at a roadside Blimpie’s. I left him at the college and drove back down the highway to a motel near Shrewsbury, intent on picking up the car the next day.

The following morning, after a few wrong turns I found the house and the car. The actual owner of the car (a student) wasn’t present, so I did the title transfer with his parents, who were a little perturbed at having to sacrifice part of their Saturday morning to get rid of a front yard eyesore.

Paperwork squared away, I turned my attention to the car. It hadn’t moved in a year or so and was a bit rough, with a mismatched silver front right fender. Amazingly, it started well enough and ran, at least until I got the car about 50 feet out of the driveway, at which point it went completely dead. No cranking, no dash lights; nothing. I panicked for about 10 seconds and set about trying to solve the problem. I wasn’t keen on having to tow the car from PA to central NC, so there certainly was a sense of urgency. I knew it was an electrical problem, so I rooted through the minivan to see what I could find to aid diagnosis. After some searching I came up with a spare taillight bulb and a pair of twist-ties. I rigged these together to function as a test light and poked around the engine bay of the RX-7 looking for the break in the system. Turns out a fusible link, one of the main fuses protecting the electrical system, had broken from the strain of not having had current flowing through it in some time, so I twisted the two halves of the link together, tried the car again and it fired right up. I drove the minivan back up the highway, picked up Jonathan from Messiah, and we booked it back down I95 and I85, going 80+ mph the whole way. We made excellent time, and returned home that night.

At the time, I was 20 and had very little experience working on cars, though I had a considerable amount of “theoretical” knowledge. With Aaron’s assistance and encouragement, though, I started to tear into the RX-7. A project day at his house cured a couple of electrical bugs, and he showed me how to prep and paint the fender to match the rest of the car (though I later “got happy” with a can of spray paint and ruined the day’s work). I bought a high-flow downpipe and catalytic converter to install as well, and while we were able to get it on, the rest of the exhaust system crumbled as we unbolted it, having been exposed to many northern winters. I drove it home with no catback, and marveled that such a little engine could make so much noise…

Continue reading with “Part II: Red.”

Editor’s note: This post is adapted from a “car history” post I wrote on an older blog of mine some years ago. The photo above does not depict the actual car; the only image I have of it resides in one of my parents’ photo albums and will be added once scanned.

If I were in the market for a new midsize sedan, I’d pick up one of these in a New York minute.

Autoblog recently reported on the upcoming 2014 Mazda 6, unveiled this week at the Moscow Auto Show, and boy, is it a looker. The second Mazda (after the comparo-winning CX-5 mini-SUV) to feature Mazda’s new Kodo design philosophy, the new 6 solidifies the automaker’s move away from grotesque smiling grilles toward a more attractive, distinctive face. The new 5-pointed grille opening is at once lower, giving the nose a more sports-car-like profile, and more upright, lending it additional aggressiveness as the headlights sweep into the very prominent front fender bulges. While they may initially seem out of sync with the slightly more slab-sided rear flanks of the car, recall that flared rear fenders on a sedan can seem a bit cartoonish if done incorrectly (see: current Nissan Maxima) and besides, the fronts serve a visual purpose: To highlight Mazda’s traditional emphasis on handling and driving enjoyment.

The rear, for its part, is nicely tailored and reminiscent of the very handsome Kia Optima’s. It’s also thankfully free of any trinkets and extraneous ornamentation that would quickly date the car; as a result, I have a feeling the shape will seem fresh for quite some time.

The interior is spectacularly well done. It features a meaty 3-spoke wheel, pleasing lighting and detailing and a neatly laid out center stack with actual grasp-it knobs flanking the multifunction screen. I don’t think it’s overstating the case to call the new 6’s interior Audi-esque, and ’round these parts, cabin styling accolades don’t get any higher than that.

With the shape spot-on, the only potential cause for concern is the output of the engines Mazda plans to offer under the new 6’s hood. The aforementioned CX-5 won the recent Car and Driver comparo on the basis of its chassis dynamics; speed-wise it ranked dead last among its competitors. Mazda has an unfortunate history of creating brilliant-driving, yet underpowered cars, and here’s hoping the new 6 bucks that tendency. I will say things don’t look so rosy at the moment: The only engine available with a 6-speed manual is a 2.0l, 148 hp 4-cylinder. The new 6 would have to be made of feathers and aerogel for that kind of output to be able to move it at a respectable pace. There will be a 189-hp 4-cylinder option, still a rather pathetic number nowadays, but sadly it looks as though the stronger engine will only be mated to a slushbox.

If styling and cornering acumen alone were enough to secure the top spot in the hotly-contested midsize segment, I’d say Mazda hits the bulleye with their new 6. Let’s just hope the automaker’s engine choices don’t let down the rest of the car.

Here’s an oddball.

The ’95-’03 Mazda Millenia was essentially an orphan: It was built on a unique chassis, and no direct predecessors or descendants. It was intended to be one of the initial pillars of Mazda’s Amati luxury brand, but when that project was shelved, the automaker decided to roll out the Millenia under their main brand as a kind of replacement for their range-topping RWD 929 luxury car. The Millenia, though, hewed to a substantially different philosophy than the 929, being smaller, lighter, FWD and with more of an emphasis on handling excellence as opposed to smooth, serene highway cruising.

It was never a roadburner, even with the optional 210-hp 2.3l Miller Cycle V6 (more on that later), but its chassis dynamics were typically polished and lively, a rarity for cars in its class. Also, the Millenia weighed in at a trim (for its class) 3,400 lbs, a figure that benefited performance and fuel economy.

Debits? Pretty anonymous styling, although the basic proportions are well-executed and handsome, especially in person. It has the same overall stance as my BMW E34 525i: Solid yet flowing, and perfectly tasteful. My only quibble is with the nose area: The grille is oddly placed and shaped, and the other elements seem to have been located with an arbitrariness uncomfortably recalling the contemporary Chrysler 300M. As nice as the rest of the styling is, it’s a shame Mazda couldn’t give the Millenia a more cohesive face.

The top-of-the-line V6 engine was unique. Wringing 210 hp from only 2.3 liters of displacement, it employed a variation of the traditional 4-stroke suck-squish-bang-blow process known as the Miller cycle. The idea is to reduce pumping losses during the compression stroke by holding the intake valve open for much longer, well into the piston’s upward rise, and relying on a supercharger to force the intake charge to stay inside the cylinder. The power loss from the supercharger is less than would be incurred by the piston having to compress as much of the fuel/air mixture as it would with a conventional cam profile, so the upshot is more net power from less displacement. It’s a neat idea, and it worked, giving the Millenia class-leading fuel economy with respectable power from a smallish engine, as the cost of a bit of added complexity.

The Millenia was treated to a refresh for the 2001 model year, with most of the emphasis going to a fascia redesign which, ironically, made the car even more bland-looking and anodyne. And when the axe finally fell at the end of 2003, after a long, eight-year model run, Mazda never fielded a replacement, ending their participation in the luxury + performance market niche.

The Millenia deserved more success. Never quite sure how to market the car, Mazda seemed to suffer from much of the same ambivalence about their own product that afflicted the early Infiniti Q45’s model run. It was a luxury car with a few novel technical tricks up its sleeve, and blessed with a taut chassis and a dash of performance, and the Japanese just weren’t sure how to take on BMW on their own turf. I’m still not quite sure they are. Perhaps with more marketing resolve the Millenia could have been pitched as a worthy contender (the chassis was certainly up to par). Pity it wasn’t.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series highlighting FWD cars I think highly of, in spite of my overwhelming RWD bias. Read the other installments here:

• Peugeot 205 GTI
• B4 Volkswagen Passat
• Lancia Fulvia Coupe
• Acura Vigor
• Citroën SM
• Fiat Coupé
• ’91-’96 Infiniti G20
• ’91-’94 B13 Nissan Sentra SE-R
• ’88-’92 Mazda MX-6
• Audi Coupe GT
• Volkswagen Corrado
• Peugeot 405 Mi16
• ’78-’93 Saab 900
• Volvo 850 T-5R
• 5th-generation Honda Prelude
• 1st- and 2nd-generation Volkswagen Scirocco

Time for a bit of rotary news.

Autocar reports some insider knowledge of Mazda’s plans for an upcoming successor to the recently-axed RX-8 and legendary RX-7.

If the rumors are true, the new RX-9, as it’s likely to be called, will be built around the Japanese automaker’s latest refinement of the rotary, known internally as the 16X. Unlike nearly all previous generations of Mazda’s iconic engine, the 16X features a longer equivalent of a rotary’s stroke, greatly increasing its efficiency and alleviating much of its bemoaned lack of low-end torque.

Design-wise, now that Mazda has thankfully abandoned its cartoonish Nagare design theme in favor of the much handsomer Kodo styling philosophy, there’s no reason to expect the RX-9 to sport a grotesque, grinning maw. No, I’m hopeful the upcoming sports car will feature a more aggressive variant of the recently-released CX-5‘s attractive nose.

All the pieces are in place: Brand-new Wankel engine, appealing design direction… All that’s left is to build it. Substantiate the rumors, Mazda!

Editor’s note: The car pictured at top is a Mazda concept and doesn’t officially represent a definite design direction for a new production sports car.

This build isn’t even done yet, but the engineering and fabrication is so stunning that I feel compelled to feature it.

The skinny? It’s custom-engineered, 2.6l, peripheral port, 4-rotor Wankel engine transplant into a 2nd generation (FC) Mazda RX-7. Every piece is so jewel-like that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

John Huijben, an engineer and machinist based in the Netherlands, decided on a bit of a whim to put this engine together in his spare time. In his words, it’s more of an engineering exercise than anything else, and not meant to be a part of a fully integrated car. Put another way, it isn’t remotely the most practical or sensible way to build a powerful RX-7, but Lord help me if it isn’t absolutely fascinating. My kind of project, in other words.

Here’s the shell: a basic Series 4 (’86-’88) RX-7, a touch rusty, stripped down the degree it’ll have to be to accept the engine.

One of the build thread’s highlights is the CAD work. Stunning exploded views precede almost every major update and illustrate the benefits of careful design over a less thought-out, more improvised approach to engine building.

The slide throttle in particular is a complete work of engineering art. Less restrictive than a conventional butterfly throttle, especially at WOT, its design and implementation are peerless.

The part of the 4-rotor build that takes the cake, though, has to be the custom eccentric shaft (a rotary’s equivalent of a crankshaft). Instead of mating two e-shafts from smaller, 2-rotor engines, Huijben decided to design and machine his own custom piece from a solid steel billet (shown at top in photo above). Given its precise balancing, oiling and harmonics requirements, it’s a tour de force of engineering.

I’ll definitely be keeping up with the build’s progress. Can’t wait to see it come to life for the first time!

H/t to Aaron for the link to the build. Thanks!

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series showcasing awesome engine swaps and builds. Read the other installments here:

• Audi V8 into S3 Lotus Esprit
• ’69 Chevy Camaro with LS7/LS9 hybrid

Took a little detour today to pay a visit to my friend Aaron and his labor of love: A neglected/abused ’93 Mazda RX-7 Touring.

Aaron and I have both been rotary engine enthusiasts for ages, but he goes back even farther than me—his first car was an ’86 RX-7 GXL. His uncle was the car’s original owner, and he had replaced it with a 3rd generation car, giving his nephew rides and creating a strong sense of “someday…”

And after years of pining, Aaron finally picked up his erstwhile dream car a little less than a year ago. We’ll charitably call the seller a younger individual from backwoods West Virginia. He had festooned the car with diametrical opposite of everything that really fits the car’s character; a giant subwoofer box, huge rear wing, ugly body kit, heavy aftermarket wheels and a nitrous system pretty much kill all an FD RX-7’s innate “driver’s car” appeal, no mean feat. On top of all that, the car had sat immobile outside for several years before the seller decide to unload it. So Aaron got a deal, but had his work cut out for him in restoring the car’s luster.

Click here for more pictures!