Why Are Mazda RX-7s So Expensive?

a

mazda

rx-7 sold at auction last month for 100,000 10 years ago you could get one for 15,000 so how did

mazda

's famous rotary experiment go from being an unreliable 90s jdm legend to becoming In a collectible that may be about to explode in value well it has to do with the surprisingly German history of Mazda's rotary experiments, Mazda's dominance on the race track and the now out of control collector car market jdm so let's go over the origin story of the mazda rx-7 and look at the pricing trends that led us to a six figure fd im stupid this is albon let's start the story begins with the infamous felix vankl a german mechanical engineer felix vancouve He was born in 1902 and by the 1920s had become a member of the NSDAP the Nazi party, but most young Nazis were not interested in the same things he was, i.e. engineering, but while the children didn't like him, another person was Adolf Hitler, so in 1928, at the young age of 26, Felix Vankel went and met him. adolf hitler and other national socialists to discuss technology in the nazi party vonkel had some great ideas, but he was still young, so he went through various nazi organizations over the years and even joined the infamous ss for a couple of years , but his real big break came in the form of military contracts for the German air force and navy.

There Ivanka was given a laboratory where he developed seals and rotary valves for airplanes and torpedoes and where he began researching a new type of engine. Long story short, Felix Vunkle started working on it. He then received some funding to continue working on his projects with a small car manufacturer called nsu motorola. Fun fact: The Velka engine was purchased by Volkswagen in 1969 and immediately merged with another small automaker called Auto Union, part of Auto Union. was a small sub brand called audi, nsu and felix vancouver worked to grow auto union and the audi brand to a point where it became a fairly major player in the automotive industry and just a few years later audi was spun off from auto union and became audi ag the independent company we know today anyway rewind in 1960 and the pride and joy of felix vancouver the rotary engine was first presented to the german engineering union in munich it was reasonably well received so Just a few months later vonkel and the nsu put the rotary engine in the nsu prince, a small two-door car, and thus presented the world with the first rotary car and it was with this car, the nsu prince, that people began to associate the rotary engine with felix vancouver calling it the vanco rotary vunkle.

The rotary engine was designed to be a compact, lightweight engine that still had competitive power and torque. It also had far fewer moving parts than a traditional piston engine, making repairs easy and in

expensive

, plus they could go much faster than traditional piston engines thanks to the inherent smoothness of the rotating circular motion, okay, so at this point you're probably revisiting the title and wondering why this is another video about the germans and you're probably wondering where the hell mazda comes into this. Well, I'm glad you asked. The Mazda of the early 1960s, known as the Toyo Kogyo at the time, was desperate to innovate in order to compete in the global automobile market.

The then current president of Suneji Matsuda Mazda heard about the Vanco Matsuda rotary engine and was really attracted to the simple, lightweight, high-power design. of these engines, so in 1961 Mazda signed a contract with NSU to further develop the rotary engine. This contract allowed Mazda and nsu to compete to bring the first rotary car to market and Mazda lost that race, as I mentioned earlier the nsu prince was the first rotary car to come to market but it sucked, the nsu had failed to produce reliable superior seals for their rotors and the seals caused vibration marks or marks on the inside of the rotating housing, not to mention these engines had terrible fuel economy and oil consumption. problems and that was enough for the auto industry to basically scrap rotaries completely.

Monza, on the other hand, knew about this problem from the beginning and as such, they had already created a team of 47 engineers to solve this problem. Why 47 engineers? Well, Kenichi Yamamoto. The head of that department compared the mission of the engineers who ventured into this unexplored territory of rotary engines with that of the shijou shichi shi the shiju was a legendary band of 47 samurai warriors who had the mission of avenging the murder of their master Yamamoto He told his engineers that from now on the rotary engine should always be on your mind, whether you are asleep or awake, and these engineers were devoted, they worked day and night, they tried everything, they modified everything they could and I mean to everything that some engineers did.

They tried making apex seals out of horse and cow bones, they probably didn't work as well, and then two years later in 1963, they did it. One of the engineers proposed a particular form of apex seal that changed the frequency characteristics of the seal itself. He created a prototype and tested it on one of his vonkel rotary engines and it was a success. The apex seal left no marks on the housing and resulted in an excellent seal. By the following year, Mazda had perfected this design and began mass manufacturing these apex seals for its first rotary engine car and in May 1967, Mazda revealed the cosmo sport.

It was a sleek two-door sports car powered by a one-liter twin-rotor engine called the 10-a. This rotary-powered coupe generated 110 horsepower. only 982 cc and that was a big deal for the Japanese public because that meant they didn't have to pay the road tax for the one liter plus engine and at the same time had as much power as the larger one liter plus engines, nor did they That is, the cosmos. The sport was very popular and was a true testament to the engineering and forward thinking that Mazda had in 1968. Mazda's second rotary car hit the market, the Rotary Coupe family, also known as the R100.

The R100 was one of the first Mazdas exported to the United States and despite having a small rotary engine, Americans loved it too, that success followed Mazda to the racetrack as well, where both the cosmo and the r100 scored results Quite good in the races they entered, the R-100 even won its debut race at the Singapore Grand Prix. But Mazda's good streak was coming to an end because in 1970 the United States Congress passed the Clean Air Act requiring all new cars after 1975 to reduce the amount of hydrocarbons in their exhaust gases by more than 90%. percent the rotary engine was not a clean engine compared to its piston engine counterparts, so it was time for Mazda to start experimenting again and quickly that same year in 1970, Mazda released the RX2 or Rotary Experiment 2, which It was just a Mazda Capella rotary swap, just a year later in 1971 Mazda gave us the RX3 which was a rotary swap version of a completely different car, this was the Mazda Grand Famiglia.

The American version of the RX3 featured a larger 12A rotary engine that was a little more efficient and had 125 horsepower, but it still wasn't clean enough, so in 1972 Mazda brought it to us, the RX4 this time around. a rotary swap version of the loose Mazda and for the second model of the RX4, in 1973, it came with an all new 1.3 liter 13b rotary engine and this was the engine that was finally clean enough to meet clean air. law regulations mazda was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief after four years of consecutive development and then the oil crisis happened, gasoline prices skyrocketed and once again mazda's rotary engine was left behind in favor of piston engines which were much more fuel efficient than the rotary were mazda, bless their hearts kept trying and in 1975 we got the rx-5 which, rather than being a randomly swapped version of another car, was the second generation of the mazda cosmo, but It really wasn't enough and Mazda desperately needed to develop something that would allow the rotary engine to survive.

This brings us to the RX-6, which was the rotary-swap version of the wait. The RX-6 never existed. Rumors say that Mazda was working on a rotary swap version of the Mazda626 but it never saw the light of day why you ask right because the next number was the lucky number seven and in 1978 Mazda introduced the rx7 and this time It was a brand new, fully customized sports car with a rotary engine, the first generation FB RX-7 chassis. It had the perfect recipe: it was lightweight, front-mid-engined, and super affordable at a base price of 6400. It came with a 1.2-liter 12a rotary engine that made 100 horsepower and 105 pound-feet of torque, but the real magic was that Mazda engineers found a way.

Reusing the heat generated by the engine to aid combustion, this led to an efficiency improvement of over 50 percent and it was this particular feature of the FB RX-7 that prevented the rotary from shutting down altogether. That and the excellent chassis and 50 50 weight distribution that made the fbr7 one of the most fun cars to drive of that era. All of this amounted to an absolute home run for Mazda, which sold over 72,000 fb rx rx7s in just the first year, and over the next few years, Mazda continued to iterate on that design. With a new five-speed transmission, disc brakes, improved cooling and differentials, etc., a turbocharged version of the 12a was introduced in Japan in 1983 producing 165 horsepower and then, in '84, the 3-series RX- 7 introduced the 13b with a 1.3 liter fuel injected engine. rotary that generated 135 horsepower.

Fun fact, the rx-7 wasn't just having great success on the road. Scottish racer Tom Wackenshaw saw the potential of the FBR7 early on and immediately entered it into the Tom's Racing British Touring Car Championship. The team won the championship with driver Wind Percy at the wheel and won it again the following year. Oh, and then they also took first place in the 24-hour spa. Mazda saw the success these independent racing teams were having and decided they wanted to do it. get a little up close and personal with Facebook's racing legacy, so they went and acquired an independent Japanese racing team called Mazda Sports Corner.

Over the years, Mazda collaborated with the team and created some racing cars. racing epic rx-7 which eventually grew to become point they moved the mazda sports corner team to hiroshima in 1983 to be closer to mazda headquarters and it was there that mazda sports corner was renamed mazda speed anyway, mazda slowly began to expand its presence around the world, they ran in Japan, the United States, Europe. and now their cars compete with brands way above their league, but to give you an idea of ​​how competitive the rx-7 was, fb took the first two places in the gtu class at the 1979 24 hours of daytona. and in response To that, imsa The race organizer decided that the RX7s had to carry extra weight to level the playing field, which unfortunately was enough of a disadvantage to make them lose the championship, so Mazda then fought the decision and reversed it. and the following year they won the manufacturers' title.

And over the next 10 years, the RX-7 won over a hundred races, making it the most successful car in the history of the IMSA GT championship. By the mid-1980s, Mazda had demonstrated the power of the rotary engine and was ready to further evolve the RX-7. In 1985 the next generation of the RX-7, the FC-3, was launched, while the FB was a very simple and emotional sports car, the FC was aimed at a slightly different demographic that focused on a touring experience. smoother and sportier the first model year 1986. brought us a car that had quite similar styling cues to the porsche 944 mazda i thought the first generation fbr7 was pretty good competing with porsches at the time, so it seemed right to adopt the styling cues of the porsches too, but although they may have seemed distant relatives, the rx-7 and the porsche were nothing alike, the fc had a naturally aspirated, fuel injected 13b rotary engine that generated horsepower, too.

It was equipped with an independent rear suspension, rack and pinion steering and disc brakes on most models, all for a base price of just 12,000, but Mazda wanted to go further this time and that's why they incorporated technology like their dynamic tracking suspension which had the ability to change toe-in on the rear suspension to give the RX-7 passive rear steeringin cornering loads. and then there was the aas or automatically adjusting suspension. This was an early version of the current active damper that changed the damping characteristics depending on the road and various driving characteristics and, in addition to all these updates, Mazda even went so far as to make special editions of the fcr x7, the first being the turbo 2. the Turbo 2 used a twin scroll turbo system that minimized turbo lag and increased the 13B to 179 horsepower and then there was the GTU edition which was released in 1989 to celebrate Mazda's success in IMSA racing.

A limited edition car built around the base model to save weight, it came with manual windows, had no rear wiper, and air conditioning was optional. The GTU also took the turbo model's larger front brakes, steering system, wheels and spoiler and even gained a G2-specific limited-slip differential. Mazda is rumored to have built 100 GTU cars between 1989 and 1990. Whatever trim or special edition you got, although the FC was an incredible car, it won Motor Trends Import Car of the Year for 1986 and the turbo 2 was among the 10 best cars and drivers. listed for the second time in a row in 1987, but it wasn't just the magazines where the FCRX-7 was gaining popularity, the FC continued to compete in the IMSA series with great success and Mazda continued to develop and perfect its rotary engine in 1990.

After the Following the success of the RX-7 and Imsa, Mazda debuted something completely different: the 787 racing prototype. Mazda had introduced rotary-powered prototypes before, but the 787 catapulted the rotary's legacy beyond imagination. The 787 and 787b were Group C prototypes designed to compete in a few different series, the World Sports Car Championship, the Japanese Sports Prototype Championship, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. At the heart of every 787 was the r26b. This was a 2.6-liter four-rotor engine that produced 700 horsepower at 9,000 rpm. The engine used peripheral intake. continuously variable intake ports and three spark plugs per rotor, but despite all that, the 787 and 787b simply were not competitive in the world sports car championship against rivals such as Mercedes-Benz Jag and even Porsche and they also failed to keep pace against Nissan and Toyota prototypes in Japan. championship as well, but there was one category where Mazda felt they had superior reliability.

It seems ironic considering the stereotype of the rotary engine, but the 26b was meticulously designed to withstand the harsh racing climate and in 1991, Mazda took the 787b to victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans by two laps ahead, giving it It becomes the first Japanese car to win Loma and the first non-piston engine car to win Le Mans as well, but at the end of that same season, the C-Class group was replaced by the 3.5-liter class and thus the rotary engine. Mazda's 2.6-liter engine couldn't run and with that rule change one of the most iconic racing cars to ever come out of Japan was retired.

Mazda now keeps that winning 787b at the Mazda museum in Hiroshima. A trophy from a time when the Rotary really ruled the world anyway, going back to the RX-7, as with the FB, the FC saw revisions year after year that brought better looks, more power and better handling capability. Driving in typical JDM fashion. the Japanese market received an exclusive. The special edition FC called Infini was limited to 600 units a year and featured weight reduction, improved suspension, more power and the Infinii was widely considered the definitive Rx-7 until Mazda brought us an all-new Rx7 in 1992, a year after.

Winning at Le Mans Mazda brought us the third generation rx-7, the fd3, and this was the best, but you know what? We have this beautiful white fdr-x-7 behind us, so we can also drive it directly as fdr. The x7 was a huge leap forward from previous generations. Mazda ditched the FC's boxy styling and opted for an entirely new approach. The lines of the car body were smoothed and the shape of the car flowed without any sharp edges being seen. It was clearly different compared to the styling of the nsx fairlady z or skyline and when it debuted it had a great look when it came to performance, if the fb was the raw rx-7 and the fc was the performance gt rx-7 this is It was the best of both worlds, a properly focused sports car that was still easy to drive and comfortable on the streets and the FD was superbly balanced thanks to its front mid-engine, 50 50 weight distribution and double wishbone suspension, but of course Of course, we can't forget it.

On the FDR Japan's first twin sequential turbo system developed in collaboration with Hitachi, this sequential turbo system was very complex and was composed of a system of electronically controlled vacuum actuators. The result was a quick start at low revs while retaining the great turbo boost you got at high revs. Output was 252 horsepower and 217 pounds. ft of torque which was enough to push the 2,800 lb fd to 60 in 4.9 seconds pretty quick for the time and all that for under 30k in the US, that was almost 10 grand less than an equivalent turbo supra, this car Of course, it's a bit modified, making closer to 350 horsepower, but still retaining the drivability of the FD.

Needless to say, everyone loved the FD after its introduction in 1991. The FD won several awards, including car of the year at the automotive researchers and journalists conference in Japan, which was apparently highly coveted and of course , Motor Trends Import Car of the Year, hell even Playboy magazine pitted the fdr year after year. year, but Mazda enthusiasts in North America didn't get to see many of those improvements because Mazda stopped exporting the FDR X7 to the US and Canada in 1995, which was only its third model year. Oh, I'm getting too excited, I have to go home. I have to go home I have to park this in the garage and I have to start talking sitting in the bucket I have to sit in a bucket again It was fun The decline in sports car sales and the declining viability of the rotary engine were the main culprits of the decision.

Getting the RX-7 out of the US market, plus the OBD-2 standard would go into effect in 1996 and Mazda would have to spend millions of dollars updating the FD just to make it meet the requirements to sell in North America, all of that. It led Mazda after three decades of success to finally abandon the RX-7 for the Americans, but in the East the RX-7 was just getting started. 1996 brought us the fdr 7 series facelift which featured an updated 16 bit ecu making an additional 10 horsepower. In addition to new lights, spoiler brakes and 17-inch BBS wheels, 1998 brought us the 8 series, the final RX7 series and this was only sold in Japan, it had new turbos that cooled better, different arrows and in its top finish it generated 276 horsepower but even In the Japanese market the FD could not last.

In 2002 with the end of the famous RX-7 in sight, Mazda decided to give the world one last swan song to its legendary rotary experiment. This was a greatest hits version of the RX-7 with all the best parts from previous versions of the FD including larger 12.4 inch brakes, the full 276 horsepower engine and BBS wheels, they called it the spirit. The spirit name came from the fact that mazda considered the FD a pure embodiment of the sports car spirit and when they announced it, they called it the ultimate rx-7 with the most outstanding driving performance in its history.

The latter was right because Mazda only made about 1500 of them before permanently ending production of the rx7 the following year, in 2003 Mazda brought us a new one. The rotary experiment called the rx-8 like the rx-7 before it was a rotary engine sports car, but it had a number of fundamental differences from the rx-7. Mazda now under Ford ownership wanted to make a more practical version of Mazda's rotary sports car. auto, so the rx-8 featured a non-turbo renesis 13b engine that produced 189 horsepower in the base model and 237 horsepower in the top 6-port version. It was also technically a four-door with rear suicide doors that could only open rearwards.

However, after opening the front doors and honestly it wasn't bad, it was a balanced sports car that was quite well thought out and quite practical too. It had some reliability issues but if you maintained it properly as you should with a rotary it was fine and compared to the fd it was a real bestseller as it sold almost three times as many cars in the same time period but for some reason it never managed capture the hearts and minds of car enthusiasts and when people thought of the Mazda rotary they always imagined the magnificent curves of the FD RX-7, which is probably why today the FD RX-7 is still The most valuable of all Mazda's rotary experiments, but before we talk about how much the FDS costs for now, let's quickly look at the first two generations.

Of the RX-7 FBS were produced in greater quantities and almost half a million of them were sold worldwide. Add to that the fact that they are all cheap Japanese cooperatives almost 40 years old and well, you can imagine that most of them have disintegrated. For now, but for the ones that are still in one piece, you can almost always buy them for between five and ten thousand dollars for the nicest one. Interestingly they have been gaining value lately with some going for over twenty thousand dollars in 2018 and then a 1983 gsl five speed with only 4700 miles that sold for 47500 which is the most any facebook has ever sold especially considering that the new base price was about 6400, some more have sold for about 30 grand since then, so the facebook is really starting to hit its stride as a classic collector car as far as fcs are concerned, well, they have always been in the same range as fbs just five years ago, five to ten thousand dollars could get you a very clean fc, but unlike fb, which has risen in value between 5 and 10 thousand dollars, it will continue to offer you The same FC today, prices have remained practically stable for most models, but some special editions have sold for around twenty thousand dollars, with one exception in May 2018, the IMSA.

The gtu fcr7 race car, yes, the same one that won the 24 hours of Daytona was auctioned. Bring a trailer. This legendary tubular frame race car was recently refreshed with a peripheral rotary port rebuild done in 2017 along with a host of upgrades, this was a true piece of Mazda history, one of their most important race cars perhaps. second only to the 787, needless to say it sold for an amount that any piece of history should be 150,000, but as I mentioned in the Porsche 911 video, I don't. We don't count race cars as record sales, so while this might technically be the most

expensive

RX-7 ever sold, it's not a street car, so it doesn't count, so now we move on to the generation of the rx-7 that does have the record.

The FD RX-7 dates back to 2010. The FDs were an interesting proposition on the used car market, most FDs in fairly good condition cost between ten and fifteen thousand dollars, with many non-running cars that could be had for about five grand and that was the big thing, tons of fdr x7s just sat rotting in peoples driveways with blown top seals and low compression and most of the time those cars were just sold to other car owners fd that they would put together a car that would run and hopefully get 10 or 20,000 miles of happy rotary engine until it blew up again, you see the aftermarket for fds was in a weird place where a lot of people were happy to bolt and drive and generate Lots of power, but very few people actually took the time to modify it properly. and tuning their fds for longevity, all of this led to the fd having a very bad reputation in the car community and most people coming from other brands simply saw the rx-7 as a platform to swap in 2jz or ls and like this for the next six years.

Seven years the fd stayed in that 10-20k range, with most clean and somewhat modified cars going for around 15k and many extended projects selling for 10k or less, but as with the fb market, the fd experienced a late renaissance. Around 2017, some very original unmodified examples of the fd were found at auction selling for over $20k and some were even soldfor 30,000 why the random jump in price first of all it was the same explosive jdm collector car market that took supra and nsx and prices from the horizon to the upper stratosphere but on top of that the bad reputation What the fds had was slowly starting to erode thanks to aftermarket tuning really hitting its stride and creating reliable packages for rotary engines and the simple fact that the fd was moved to classic car status and therefore , its image began to form more around its cultural impact than performance or reliability alone.

All this meant that in 2018 the market was ready to explode first, a red 1993 Touring model with only 17,000 miles sold for 39,999 followed by another red 93 touring with less than 9,000 miles that sold for 49,000, then a 94 turing in white chased with less than 30,000 miles that sold for 40,000 and a dollar, the fds kept coming and by the end of 2018 almost a dozen fds had sold for over 30 thousand dollars, the fd was finally in A good run and all this new interest finally culminated in 2019 when in 1994 the Montego Blue Touring sold at auction for seventy thousand dollars, the highest price for an FD, but this was a market. -set up sale, so it was no surprise that another 2800 mile 93 fd sold for 52,500 just a few months later, across the pond, fds were found at auction for big bucks, most notably which was a Spirit from 2002. r with only 16,000 kilometers which sold for 41,625 pounds or around 57,000 US dollars, it was a good deal for all intents and purposes, especially considering it was the ultra rare Spirit r model and especially considering what would come next in 2020. many cars come out of storage and go on sale and most of them sell for 30-40k this year. 2021 is already off to a spectacular start with many cars selling over $40k and even a 1995 Silverstone metallic fd selling for $57k, by the way 1995 was the rarest year in the United States with a estimated to be only around 500 exported to the country.

This silver car was only one of 34 in its spec, so buyers definitely turned up, but it was still far from the most expensive. fd sale that sale was at 2021 shannon auctions in sydney australia a titanium gray 2002 spirit r with over 70,000 miles. Note that it came up for auction at 420. As with most of these cars it was in fantastic condition with all service history and records, you might want the hammer price 125,000, that's Australian dollars but with the fees auction which amounted to around a hundred thousand US dollars, it's interesting, although maybe I'm tired after making all these videos about supra and nsx. and the horizon, but 100 grand doesn't seem like much these days, the FD certainly has the rarity and for many people the social value that its other jdm counterparts had, but throughout history it always seemed like the rx- 7 was treated as a class below the others, maybe it's the fact that the FD was a cheaper car, maybe it's still the lingering aversion to the rotary engine or maybe the rx-7 just hasn't hit its stride yet as collector cars like the supra, nsx and skyline, whatever the The reason may be that the FD sits in a kind of strange middle ground, many of them are still cheap enough to be accessible to people common, but they are generally not desirable enough to command the eye-watering prices we see with some of the others. cars, how cheap are they you may ask, let's take a look at some examples, here are some for sale at pretty reasonable prices, this 1995 tour in Texas is a decent looking car with only 52,000 miles for under 29k dollars, but here's the thing.

It's a JDM model and JDM cars typically sell for about 20 percent less than their US dollar equivalent, so 29,000 this is probably a pretty average price. Next up is a 1994 Montego Blue for sale on Hemming's website. It has 78,000 miles and is listed for 39,500. Not a bad price for a very original looking car, but let's look for the really cheap stuff the diamonds in the rough let's go to the Facebook marketplace here's a 1993 montego blue card that's on very bad condition but hey it runs and it's a manual for fifteen grand not a terrible deal assuming it's mechanically sound but it definitely needs a lot of body work this one is a little more reasonable a 1993 model with 125,000 miles a little questionable on As for the mods, but overall it looks like a decent racer for under 30 grand.

Not a bad deal, but you could probably haggle them down. Drop another two thousand and make it a great deal. One thing you will notice is that there are many JDM cars on sale now that are importable and, as I mentioned before, they are about 20 percent less valuable than their American equivalents. -spec car, but if you're looking for a clean and affordable rx-7 this is definitely the way to go, then the rx-7 has certainly found its way into the collector world with the odd example selling for 50 60 and even a hundred thousand dollars. But despite these standout sales, there are plenty of RX7s at prices anyone can afford and the average transaction is somewhere in the 30,000 range, the FD still walks the line between a coveted collectible car and a tuner car. affordable in many ways the market resembles the supermarket a few years ago, with clean low mileage examples coming out of nowhere and selling for a lot of money, but also a decent number of project cars for sale waiting to be restored and Turned into profit, those project Supras though were quickly snapped up by collectors, fins and restorers over the last five years and today you'll be hard-pressed to find a cheap USDM Supra anywhere online, so what about the RX7?

Will it do what the supra did well? It's hard to say this. The market may well be a rocket waiting to be launched and cars that sell for 20-30 grand now will sell for a lot of money in a few years or maybe the fd is another peaking JDM collectible, just than a peak smaller than all the others. I know that the fdr . In my life and with the way current price trends are going, I should probably act fast, otherwise, just like with the Supra NSX and Horizon, the market could leave me behind. Thank you all so much for watching, if you liked what you saw please do.

Give us a like, it helps the channel a lot and make sure to subscribe. We have album t-shirts for sale at a link in the description as well as a link to patreon if you want to support the channel, I'll see you. guys next time