http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jalopnik.com.png http://jalopnik.com/tag/rx-7 http://jalopnik.com/tag/rx-7 Again proving that two wheels are greater than four, motorcycles are even better drifters. [HellForLeather] More »
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114 years ago last week, Stephen M. Balzer patented the first rotary-engine. Sometimes confused with the Wankel Rotary used in vehicles like this 1980s Mazda Rx-7 Spec B Rally, Balzer's design was vastly different. (H/t to all for the correction) (Photo Credit: exfordy) More »
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Not to be outshone by the flood of Scions and Hondas crowding SEMA, Mazda brought a full range of toys, from cosmetically enhanced Mazda2s up to the time-attack Mazda3 sporting 500 hp from a 2.5-liter four banger. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5681961&view=rss&microfeed=true The next Mazda RX-7 will be turbocharged, possibly electrically. Annnnnd we still miss the FD. [Autocar] More »
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What's the winningest marque in 24 Hours of LeMons history? Mazda! With today's win by the Ghetto Motorsports RX-7, Mazda now has eight overall LeMons wins (Toyota and BMW are tied for second, with five wins apiece). More »
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The year is 1987, the place is Palo Alto and this is Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, and Vinod Khosla — the co-founders of Sun Microsystems. If you haven’t guessed it already, these guys have made it big. More »
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The slow-selling refreshed Mazda RX-8 is on its way out according to a source at Mazda HQ. Fortunately, a new Mazda RX-7 is rumored to be in the works. Wanks for the memories! [Motor Trend] More »
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Falling squarely into the "Don't try this at home" department comes the latest ill-advised engineering breakthrough: LeMons Line-Lock! Say you're taking your LeMons RX-7 drag racing and want to show those 900-horsepower Novas some real burnout action. Here's how! More »
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Here at the Cain't Git Bayou 24 Hours of LeMons, at No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, Louisiana, we just saw our first-ever Hemi-powered Chrysler. Since there's a dragstrip here, the quarter-mile trash-talking started immediately. More »
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Some have accused the second generation RX7 of being the softest of the breed. Of course, a monster V8, like today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe candidate has, can make it much harder. And, it might make you hard too. More »
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The Wankel engine has always proved that Mazda marches to a different beat. As it's getting toward convertible weather, Nice Price or Crack Pipe has a flambe-painted '89 drop-top at a price you might find hard to beat. More »
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Back in the ‘70s, Mazda's tepid little family car took liberties with the appellation "Great." But today Nice Price or Crack Pipe has a GLC that should be PDQ, and it asks orange you glad I didn't say banana? More »
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Like the Porsche 944, we were surprised by how poorly many RX-7s fare in the 24 Hours Of LeMons (though the succeed/fail breakdown seems to be an all-or-nothing sort of deal, with few falling in the middle third of the standings). Fuel system ailments and fragile suspensions seem to be the weak points. More »
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When an automaker builds a car named the Cosmo Big Run Genteel, you know they're going to make some good television advertisements. Yes, we're talking about Mazda here! More »
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Remember when the Torqueless Rotards RX-7 flipped at the 24 Hours Of LeMons South Fall '09? In all the excitement, I'd forgotten that the Rotards gave me a copy of their in-car video! More »
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Much as we'd like to see an Omni win a LeMons race, we're still pretty happy that a team has won both People's Curse and overall win in the same race! More »
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It says it right on the People's Curse ballots: Don't vote to crush a car just because it's ahead of you! Still, that's what happened today; the White Lightning RX-7 got the most votes. More »
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It's 98 degrees out, engine failures are proliferating like uranium centrifuges in the Middle East... and an RX-7 is leading the race. More »
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Here's another lesson for those of you building a LeMons car: Invest a few bucks in new wheel studs! More »
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Every year we hear of a new rumor involving Mazda's long departed RX-7 making a zombie-like comeback, but we've now hearing we should expect a new 1.6-liter rotary RX-7 concept for the Tokyo Motor Show. More »
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After every 24 Hours Of LeMons race, we put together this list of the top finishers for you. And when we say "top," we mean "every single car that managed to get onto the track." More »
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After putting away some excellent bratwurst, courtesy of the Fahrt Schnell Merkur XR4Ti team, I've dug up photos of the top ten contenders at the end of Day One of LeMons South racing. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street Bonus Edition! We're back with more Tomsk photos from behind the Orange Curtain. More »
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Japanese cars made up nearly half the entries at the Gator-O-Rama, with 44 out of 95 vehicles coming from the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Miatas, Celicas, and RX-7s galore, of course, but that wasn't all. More »
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For the first time ever, Detroit iron dominated a 24 Hours Of LeMons event, with American-built machinery taking four of the top five positions (if you consider a California-built Corolla to be American-built, that is). More »
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The Lam-Bro-Ghini, which appears to have once been an FC RX-7, is a true exotic. And when we say exotic, what we really mean is a car with a severe case of the exotic disease Leishmaniasis. More »
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You know how most first-gen RX-7s got blown up, wrecked, or otherwise hooned to death, with the scattered survivors slowly fading into beaterness? Not this one! More »
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We're not saying we don't like the Mazda Rotary, but it's hard to say anything bad about an RX-7 that can spin the tires in fourth gear. Jack Baruth, aka ViergangFuchs, ran across this 543-horse beast when he stopped by Matt “Tinman” Johnston's shop to pick up his new NASA Neon ACR (the previous one having been garbooned in an unfortunate car-versus-wall encounter) and gave it his unreserved stamp of approval. More »
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Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time around, we saw the beat-to-hell Dodge Colt Turbo take the win over the totally trashed Chevy Sprint Turbo in the Choose Your Eternity poll. That's great, but what if you want a cheap Japanese car that doesn't rely on turbocharging to give you the power needed to set your town's all-time record for Exhibition Of Speed tickets issued in a single week? You'll need to go the engine swap route, of course, and everyone knows the best way to do an engine swap is to take on someone else's partly-finished project! See, that way someone else screws up performs the dirty, sweaty part of obtaining the engine and getting it into the recipient car's engine compartment, leaving only thousands of a few maddeningly difficult easy tasks remaining to complete the job.
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. We've had a real Mazda shortage around these parts, probably because the early rotaries tended to blow out the apex seals and/or suck gas and thus didn't weather the decades quite as well as their piston-engine competition. There's been an '81 RX-7 (plus one non-Wankel '82 Mazda) and that's been it until today. I've decided to go deeper into the 80s to enable more RX-7s to qualify for this series, because they were great cars on the street (and on the racetrack) and deserve our respect.
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Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! We had what may be our all-time closest vote yesterday, with the 4x4 Econoline beating the lowrider Econoline 202 votes to 200. Today we're going racing! We've had Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza LeMons PCH and the LeMons San Francisco PCH, and now tradition dictates that we have a LeMons South Edition PCH. Just in time for teams still hoping to make the deadline for the Yeehaw It's Texas LeMons event! More »
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Can a dead-stock LT1-powered Caprice cop car keep up with a bunch of speedy imports? Probably not, but the Punisher Racing Caprice is holding a close second place behind the She Got It All RX-7. Stay tuned for the exciting finish! More »
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We had another close race down the highway to the Lake of Fire yesterday, with the so-called win going to the triple helping of '55 Austin FX3 cabs in the Choose Your Eternity poll. Today, however, I'm inspired by the big drums of used tempura-frying oil I saw waiting for disposal behind the Japanese take-out joint near my house; think of all that potential carbon-neutral fuel just sitting there, waiting for some enterprising sort to put together a veggie-oil diesel machine to burn it up! Actually, what we really want is a diesel that runs on liposuction fat harvested from cosmetic surgeons- imagine the sheer coolness of driving a car that runs on human flesh- but the next best thing is a project fueled by your soul! More »
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The new Nissan GT-R may be stirring up a lot of hype, but before the R35, Skyline lovers on this continent had to have their cars independently imported. The problem is, since the gray-market heyday of the '80s, the American import laws have been pretty dang strict. So, we decided to make our way up to Toronto, to check out how hoons in great white north do things. This particular operation, ONI JDM, has brought in everything from kei cars to fully-modded RX-7s, Supras, and of course Skylines. They offered to take us for a ride in their drift-spec R32 Nissan Skyline, so we bolted down the video camera and strapped ourselves in. More »
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Here's an example of an engine we couldn't really include in the Workhorse Engine of the Day series, because in spite of its incredible power-to-weight ratio and overall screamin' glory, the rotary engine is just not bulletproof enough to be considered a true workhorse. All that's changed with the new EOTD series, however, and we can now celebrate the nonreciprocating awesomeness that is the Mazda 13B. In truth, all the Mazda Wankels are variations on the same design; we just selected the 13B as the flavor that was built for the longest period, 1973 through 2002. Cosmos, RX-7s, 7-second Starlets, you name it, the 13B has powered it. Make the jump for our favorite hypnotic GIF animation. [Mazda, Wikipedia] More »
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So the official list of teams accepted for the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Altamont is out, and my team made the cut! So we'll be out there on the track with the Porcubimmer and some other Jalopnik-related teams you'll be hearing about over the coming weeks (including the Carpet Pissers, who were also accepted for Altamont). And, you know, I actually feel sorry for those other teams. By God, I do! You see, we've got a new guy on the team, and he knows a thing or two about racing... More »
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The illustrator's over at Winding Road have been having fun with a possible future RX-9 based on previous concepts such as the Mazda Nagare. Their guesstimation picks up some of the Nagare aft of the A-pillar, with a modernization of lines from the current generation RX-8 and last generation RX-7 in the rear. As for under the hood, guesses range from a modified Renesis to something as out-of-character as a V8. But before you rotorheads get up in arms, remember this is all just educated dart throwing. [WindingRoad] More »
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Now we're starting to see more and more cars limping- or being dragged- into the pits for hours of frantic repair work. In some cases, it becomes clear that the car is finished. Here's one where it's too early to tell: an RX-7 gushing smoke from the engine compartment, surrounded by worried team members. A while back, we heard plaintive calls over the PA for someone with an extra Honda Civic transmission, followed by pleas for a BMW alternator. More »
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Here's another car for which I am unable to provide an exact model year; judging from the side moldings and air dam appearance, I can say it looks like a first-generation car from the 1981-83 period. Mazda rotary fanatics (are they known as Rotarians?), feel free to weigh in with your opinions on the topic. In any case, what we have here is a type of car that was once quite common but is now regrettably rare. More »
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