Not gonna lie, sports fans. This ad tugged at my heartstrings. I think the same will happen to you too.
"The dream of a pure sports car has been kept alive by the people who race them," the narrator says, as we are treated to shots of racing vehicles from decades past.
Then we see it – the RX-7, curvaceous and vibrant as it powers through the corners. It boasts "the simple thrill that only comes from driving a lightweight car with a lot of power…"
And now comes the part that really stings: "…a car that car companies no longer made."
Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and the RX-7 is also a car that is no longer made.
Frankly, I don't believe anything has stepped up to take its place. Good as it was, the RX-8 certainly didn't do that. We have light cars like the FR-S/BRZ twins and Mazda's own MX-5, but they aren't very powerful. We have bigger, heavier sports cars with more power, but they can't dance like the RX-7 did. Today we are generally lacking in the "lightweight car with a lot of power" department.
The FD3S was a car that only weighed 2,800 pounds and packed a rotary engine probably underrated at 255 horsepower – good for a 0 to 60 run of 5.1 seconds. There wasn't some pansy-ass non-turbo version like the Supra or 300ZX had. With the RX-7, you had to go hard with twin turbos or go home. It took true skill to drive one, too. As Motive Magazine said, "The car owned the driver, and the driver was bent to its will… The RX-7 doesn't suffer novices."
Yes, it guzzled gas and oil, and it was so unreliable it barely had the right to call itself a Japanese car. It was still awesome, and certainly the purest sports car out of its mid-1990s competition.
We miss the RX-7. Perhaps it will return to us one day, when we need it the most.
Tell us – what's the modern day RX-7? Do we have one at all?