Minneapolis Street Sighting: Buick Reatta

In the late 1980s, and well into the early-1990s, GM was going through a major restructuring; sales were falling, and the rise of personal GT cars, and other "European" ventures were being welcomed 'stateside. This prompted GM to bring out a trio of upmarket, supposedly European-influenced vehicles to each of its premium-core brands. Since Chevrolet was seen as the bread-and-butter brand, and Pontiac was geared toward excitement, neither of those brands were offered a piece of the luxury pie; GM instead gave those honors to none other than Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile.
In late 1987, scoops of the Cadillac Allante hit car magazines, and within months, various enthusiast publications predicted that Oldsmobile would have a version of this "new European derived Cadillac", and they were right; what magazines didn't know is that Buick would receive one as well.
Since Buick was, at the time, experimenting with performance cars like the Regal GNX, and Grand National, speculation was that if a Buick version of this new car came out, it would carry a turbo powerplant; unfortunately, this was not so. Instead, the Reatta was a rather sour mixture of new-age luxury wrapped in svelte body--not unlike the Buick Regal GS of today; sleek body, and tons of luxury without power a sporty car does not make.
Not very many Reattas were made -- even though it was intended from the start as a halo car, production still fell short of initial expectations. Even though it says just over 20,000 were built, exact production numbers are unknown, and because these cars were hand-built, build dates are unknown; the hardtop is the most common, with the convertible being ever so rarer with just under 2500 built. To date, I have seen maybe four or five convertibles, and about thirty or so hardtops--and probably the same car more than once.









Like most Reattas I see, this one is in rather good condition; it isn't perfect, but what daily-driven Minnesota car is? As non-red Reattas go, this example is the nicest I've seen; they were available in black, white, and gray, all of which I have seen, but most of them I encounter seem to be red. Yes, red was a very popular car--not only for the Reatta, but for other "sporty" cars of this era, too. The Mercury Capri, which wasn't quite a competitor, but it followed the whole "sporty looks with not much cook" format fairly well.
With the exception of some minor damage to the left headlight, this collector Buick seems to good-to-go. I don't recall seeing any "pristine" ones, either. All the ones I've seen have damage to either the headlight fixtures, or suffer from leaky taillights. Oddly enough, the leaky taillight problem exists on the Allante as well. Go figure.
I have no desire to own one of these, but I do like them in their own right; it's a shame these cars didn't live up to their looks, but I suppose that can be said of all of the "luxury coupes" that debuted in the 1988-1991 season, the Allante included.

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.