Anonymous

Reviewed a 1988 Mazda SE on Mar 23, 2014

Sadly, the majority of my cars over the years have been either red or white. Yuck! I was the proud owner of a 1988 Mazda RX-7 in blah-white paint for several years. My nephew now owns the car. I bought the RX-7 with 110,000 miles, no accidents, and two previous owners from a used car dealer for $2000 cash. At roughly 240,000 miles the Apex seals went out. They typically need replacing every 150,000 miles but I got really lucky. I was pricing whole engines at this point, due to the extremely high mileage, and noticed that rebuilt units cost more than I had paid for the car! I randomly started calling salvage yards and lucked out again by finding a good runner from an '89 with 68,000 miles for only $150.00! The engine swap took about 8 hours under an oak tree in my dad's yard and it was back up and running. I then decided to rebuild the original engine as a spare, which I took my time with. Fortunately, again, the rotor housings all measured well within maximum wear tolerances so the total rebuild cost a little over $600.00, including changing the intake gaskets and having the injectors checked and cleaned. It only took me about 2 to 3 hours every other day over four weeks. Up to this point I had never worked on a rotary engine, or even even seen one outside of the car in person, but it was the easiest rebuild I'd ever done. Why do I mention all this? This is the only thing I had to do to the car besides basic maintenance and an alternator. Everything on the RX-7 seemed to be made of superior grade materials. I have dealt with Porsches in my time and this car had similar looks to the 944, but outperformed it in nearly every way except the hood badge. The lightweight construction without feeling cheap, power to spare, and the ability turn on a dime or drift through an empty Wal-mart parking lot at three am are unsurpassed. The brakes on the RX-7 were the best I've ever experienced. I think they were actually designed to check if the inertia seatbelts were working properly.... and give drivers a sore left shoulder by the end of a day. My RX-7 was the first car I ever beat the crap out of on a daily basis and it kept coming back for more every time. Ironically, the Apex seals went on a lazy Sunday evening drive while my daughter and I were coming back home from dinner at her grandparents. Even popping and coughing and barfing oil, it still made it home. As I said, it became my nephew's first car, He loves it's looks, respects it's history, and fears it's power! He drives it like a grandma in a Dodge Omni.