Consider me conflicted: this 1980 Mazda RX7 is in time-warp condition, looking quite near to what it did when it left the factory floor. The paint is shiny, the black trim lustrous and the original body lines of Mazda’s premier sports car are spot-on. But it’s an automatic, perhaps the worst transmission in the world to have next to a rev-happy rotary. What to do? Find it here on eBay for $8,995 or best offer.
The simple truth is that while the RX7 of this generation is not necessarily hard to find, it’s very difficult to locate one that’s been preserved or cared for with long-term ownership in mind. While the automatic transmission signals to me that the Mazda was in the loving care of an elderly owner, it does restrict some of the enjoyment the RX7 delivered in spades in manual transmission form.
The interior is lovely, with just some bagging up of the driver’s seat to worry about. If you can buy this Mazda as a showpiece – a car not intended for spirited driving but rather to demonstrate their condition when in a preserved state – I could see buying it. It’s garage art, potentially, unless someone knows of a cheap swap kit to convert this to proper three-pedal formation.
The seller says everything works on this rotary-powered coupe, including the air conditioning and door buzzer. Under-hood shows a well-detailed engine compartment and matching silver paint on the shock towers. With less than 45,000 miles from new, it’s easy to see why this early RX7 still presents so nicely – but the question on my mind is whether it’s worth going on static display or would you distort originality a bit to fit a manual transmission?
If I were to buy, distort the originality and make it a stick!
The automatic puts the wanker in the owner versus the wankel rotary engine 😏
These auto cars make great engine donors! 😉
Agree — make it a stick and have fun. Keep the auto for the next owner in case someone wants to put it back to stock for the museum.
Automatic: #$&*@: 5speed YEA! YEPEE! HURRAY!
ls swap!
Dan,
Did you do an LS swap on your dishwasher too? Lol. We can always rely on you for the endless LS SWAP comments!😀
An automatic does not necessarily mean an elderly owner. And it’s a safe bet a large majority of us love the idea of being twenty again, rowing through the gears – if we can remember that far back – but our knees and arthritic hands are quite happy to just drop it into drive.
I will second that. I know I can’t buy a Fox bodied Mustang with a stick. That clutch is too stiff for me now.
Had two of these, loved them, close to a go kart. You could not put your palm on the ground as you could in my tr3, not as cool as my 58 Porsche speedster convertible but a fun car.
I had first year ‘79 when these came out. I did have the 5-speed. Very spirited and nimble little machine, but not well-built. I had a plethora of problems in first 3 months and took a bath getting rid of it. An automatic for this car must have sucked.
Had no idea the Wankel ever had an auto trans in a RX Mazda. I’d keep it original as it came. At least keep the original trans/drivetrain for future value. Don’t know these cars well enough to guess on value, yet i would ASSume original condition , matching numbers applies here like most collectible cars.
My buddies older sister had one in the mid eighties that we “borrowed” on occasion. Safe to say this Japanese gem is an American icon.
Thumbs up for the black interior. Seems most of these had the wine color with the chocolate brown accents. Yuck…
I had a 79 and an 81…both were rust buckets, 5 speeds… ran great, hauled butt. Finding good, high speed 13 tires was always the problem
I always ran Good Year Eagle GT’s on my 79 RX7 they really worked great sticking to the road. I would have to convert it to a manual tranny. Shouldn’t be hard to find the parts you would need in a junk yard.
I bet the car still smokes even with the low miles.
Nice car,,,but,,,that rotary. I know, many will fire back, “the rotary this” and “the rotary that”, and I’ll admit, it’s a heck of a motor, it’s just, do rotaries go for 150,000 miles with little more than oil changes, like it’s Asian piston counterparts? Have fun wrenchin’ on your rotary, I’ll still take a piston engine anyday.
I owned a Mazda repair shop for 25 years. I have worked on literally hundreds of these cars. With any kind of reasonable maintainance, they will easily top 150,000 miles. I have seen several with over 250,000 miles, although that is unusual, mostly because of changes in ownership to young or low income people who don’t know or don’t care. Like Packard used to say– Ask the Man Who Ownes One. (or many of them)
Kenny is 100% correct. I currently have an 1982 RX7 with 120k miles on it. Keep up with the basic maintenance, and no problem. It has been one of the lowest maintenance cars I have ever owned. I looked at buying a 1979 RX7 many years ago that had 320k miles on it! Yes it smoked on start up briefly after sitting, but soon cleared up (someone bought it before I came back with the money). Most negative stories about the Wankel stems from turbo boosting to high levels which will shorten apex seal life. So if we are comparing Asian piston verses rotary from the late 70’s to early 80’s then I’ll bet on more miles out of the Rotary.
I had a ’79, painted lipstick red by my brother-in-law, 5-speed. One of the many cars I’ve owned that I would like to buy again. It was called a Poor Man’s Porsche back then. I compared it to the last of the C3 Corvettes, feeling smug about the low cost of ownership & lower insurance rates.
Then I started driving Corvettes.
Horsepower changes your attitude real quick.
WOW! with the exception of it being an automatic this is my first “new” car. I owned it for 14 years. Besides clutches and brakes, the only thing I had to fix was a bad connection of the hot wire off the alternator. Redline was 7k. I surpassed that every day, at least 10 times. I was young :) Boy, that rotary loved to be revved. Too bad I couldn’t afford a turbo.
Years ago, I bought a 1985 RX-7 GLSE with 90,000 miles on it. I added 100,000 more and it ran the same as when I bought it with no problems. This was a great car!
Keep the coolant fresh, keep the oil changed and keep the carbon from building up. (enjoy keeping the revs up) Fun, Fun cars. Not so fun fuel bills but to everything wonderful, there is always a down side. My father had an RX2 (after the sale of his ’58 Corvette) with an automatic (He would have preferred a stick but somehow ended up with an auto.) He was quite happy with the performance and was until way past 275,000 miles. And yes he did have to have the engine replaced once with a factory rebuilt as the engine started to drink coolant. But back in the early and mid eighties the engine program from Mazda was very economical. (I was a Mazda parts manager then and the cost on a “long block” (hard to use that term in regards to a rotary engine) was in the neighborhood of $375! But the automatic transmission kept humming (It is a Mazda) right along until the tin worm had it’s way with the body structure. I don’t ever remember a Mazda transmission failure behind a rotary engine. (Can’t say the same thing about one behind a Mazda Piston engine)
Not the same as shifting for yourself. But not a real downer behind a rotary.
I failed two 5-speeds in two different RX-7’s: 1980 and 1983. The failure mode was that they would start to pop out of 5th gear on their own. Once it started doing that, it was time to start calling junkyards looking for a transmission, as you didn’t have long.
Both transmissions failed on me getting stuck in third gear – so I also got to do the clutch each time as well. :D
If anyone has a shift problem like Scot describes, you may be using the wrong gear oil. GL3 is not readily available and GL5 is not always a good replacement for it. Lots of articles regarding this (and lots of bad information as well). I have used Pennzoil Syncromesh in two different transmissions so far with very positive performance. Look for products that list “yellow metal compatible” which means they are safe for the older syncronizers. Of course if the bearings are going bad in the transmission, a rebuild will be needed.
I used to own a ’79 RX-7 that I bought new back in 1978 when they first arrived in the USA. However, it was a 5-speed manual and it was a lot of fun to drive with linear acceleration on the tach — a real blast to take it through the gears. I agree with most readers that the automatic takes the fun-to-drive ratio down considerably. I would not give it much consideration unless it was a manual.
I bought an ’83 GLS-SE years ago. It had 90,000 mikes when I bought it, 190.000 when I sold it and nothing went wrong. It drove just fine the whole time.
Maybe it was built in late 83. The GSL-SE was only made for the 84-85 model years.
A 1982 RX7 GS was the first new car that I ever owned. Loved the rotary, but I didn’t own it long enough to discover the apex seal issues. I managed to let a 1/2 ton GMC knock the front bumper off of it in a wreck. I had it repaired by the Mazda dealership that I bought it from, but never liked the way the car drove after that. Sold it and bought a 1981 Toyota 4×4 that I had much more fun in. Found the RX7 setting in the rebuilder line at one of the local salvage yards about 2 years later. Someone had buried a power pole in the new front bumper….
The apex seal story is mostly bogus these days. Mazda had real problems with the old carbon apex seals back in 1970-71 ish. Thats where the bad reputation comes from. The later motors are all good for 150k-170k miles without problems. (Turbo motors are good for 90k miles)
I always like the rotary engines. But was “schooled” in the reliability aspect by attending a Daytona 24 Hour race. The RX7s just kept up the same pace all 24 hours long. There was a large pack of them. And if memory serves me correctly only one dropped out due to a mechanical issue. (Gear box I believe) And one for an on track shunt. They just “Hummed” along so consistently it got boring to watch. But I came away with a much higher appreciation after that race.