Minneapolis Street Sighting: Mazda Efini RX-7 FD3S

In the 1990s, the Japanese sports-car wars would be at an all-time high; the Nissan 300ZX and more-complicated Dodge Stealth R/T Twin Turbo and its Mitsubishi 3000GT partner were battling it out for luxury-sports-car supremacy. On the pure-performance side of the battle were Toyota's much-loved Supra, in both N/A and Turbo guise. Mazda, too, had a part in this battle; enter the RX-7.
As most car enthusiasts know, the RX-7 has long been more than just a pretty face; its personality is what makes it a cult-car. Doing without pistons, Mazda pioneered the rotary engine, and stuffed it into as many cars as it saw fit (no Honda); as a result, the RX-7 was born. The RX1, RX2, RX3 and so on preceded this, as the "RX" initially stood for "rotary car number".. Codenamed the FD (and a successor to the FA, FB, and FC), this new-generation RX-7 made its first appearance in the fall of 1991 as a 1992 model. The US would not receive it until the following year, but European test drives, and previews already garnered the car praise. Unfortunately, in true halo-car tradition, dealer markup was insane, and pushed the already-high price to a staggering $46,000--if not more. It's scenarios like this that finally drove the RX-7's sales--and the whole Japanese sports-car market as a whole-- down the drain, never again to return to what it was.
In 2004, the successor was launched--naturally, it was dubbed the Mazda RX-8, but it fell short on one important extreme. The power levels weren't what customers had come to expect from a sports car, and sales were never very good. In 2009, after a rather bleak five year sales run, the RX-8 was discontinued, and there's been talk of Mazda canning rotary production altogether.










RX-7s are quite a rare sight here, much less stock ones. It seems that even with the halo-car moniker and ridiculous prices, these cars are fodder for some downright distasteful modifications. Fortunately, though, this example has been left in its natural state--a JDM state that is.
Sitting in a lonely, seemingly-abandoned parking lot, this yellow FD was the surprise of the day for me; I hardly ever see them, and when I do, they're either in the hands of idiots who likely couldn't tell me what makes the RX-7 so great, or they're mothballed collector prizes that are trailered everywhere. It seems the owner of this example clearly knows his way around the car. For starters, the front bumper has been replaced with a popular Japanese piece that is often dubbed the "Viper bumper" with good reason; it's a damn near exact replica of the unit found on the first gen Dodge Viper. As I made my way around this hot lil' FD, it became apparent that the bumper wasn't the only thing JDM about this example; inside, the steering wheels is on the correct side for a Japanese car-- the right side. A nice little touch that many enthusiasts forget is the badging; this RX-7 has all the badges that one would find on the home-market version of Mazda's sports car. All of this can only head in one direction. What I spotted in Minnesota is a legit, JDM Mazda RX-7; this one, like many others found stateside, was probably imported from Canada, and registered here as a Mazda RX-7. Since Minnesota has no real inspection, unless the driver was hooning it and otherwise showing off, I doubt he'd attract much attention.
This is an amazing find, and since I cherish the FD3S so much, the JDM-ness of it only added to my excitement.