HEAD>My MazdasThis page is dedicated to the Mazda Rotaries I have owned. I'll be adding pictures as I can find them.

1989 RX-7 GTUs

1989 Mazda RX-7 GTUs Coupe.

Bright red automatic (can't have everything!) in great shape.

Drove it back to Vegas on Sunday, 08/22/04. Ran like a top. Got 27+ MPG @ 70+MPH with A/C on through the heat of the desert and steep mountains. Under normal conditions it should be better than 30 MPG

Have patience as the pics will take a bit to download. (Unless you have a cable connection and G5!! heh heh heh.)

This gives a size comparison. The RX-7 GTUs is one of the lowest sports cars ever made.

Note the speed rated tires. They allow the car to reach its 145 MPH top speed without having to worry about over speeding the tires.

In its Nevada plates and after the addition of a bra to protect the nose and hood from rocks.










Only 109 GTUs editions were produced for the "89" model year and the automatic was a special order option not even listed as available in the Mazda literature. That makes this a rare car.

The differences from a standard RX-7 of the same year are: aluminum hood, 800 pounds weight reduction throughout the body,160 HP/8000 RPM vs the standard 160 HP/7000 RPM rotary engine, tricked out automatic transmission that allows for manual type shifting, a lowering of the ground clearance and better suspension for quicker handling, disk brakes all around and five lug wheels with high speed low profile tires. The body has the ground effects front side and rear fiberglass pieces as well as a GTU wing to keep the car on the ground better than any RX-7 model until the last of the twin turbo third generation 7s.

Part of the weight saved was due to not offering the power options such as windows, locks, seats, etc. The sunroof, antenna and mirrors are the only power accessories. A factory alarm is standard.This makes for a true sports car, not a luxury sports sedan.The GTU can keep up with the higher powered Turbo II RX-7. The "89" goes back to the older rotary Mazda tradition of round tail lights and adds side mirrors with air ducts for improved streamlining with less road noise and turbulence when the windows are down. The sunroof has a deflector that pops up when the roof is open to cut down on turbulence.




















The Mazda had a large wooden box blown over against it in a wind storm. The box broke the windshield, driver's side mirror and damaged the upper edge of the driver's door. The box belonged to our contractor who is building our house, so his insurance paid for the damage. Since the collector value was already destroyed as far as "original, stock" went, we decided to let Su-z choose a new color. Interesting pale yellow, very similar to the stock color that came on my old "74" Rotary Pickup. Not gaudy like the original red. I still need to find the GTU decals and hopefully the runningboard stripes like I had on my RX-3. (triple stripe with "Mazda" lettering in center and rotary emblem at the front.) This was the second time the car was almost lost. The first was when the house burned down. The car was in the garage and when the electricity died, it took a few people to force the garage door up so I could drive it out.




1979 RX-7

1979 Mazda RX-7 Coupe.

Brown, 12a, 4 spd stick in great shape. (Yes the original imported 1st gens came in a 4 spd, with a 5 spd and auto as options.

The first 3 pictures are as it was after being set up for street, rally and road course. The driving lights, fog lights and the bra were for rally and were removable for road course. The suspension was lowered 1 1/2" and beefed and I added the under hood cross brace assembly that every 1st. gen should have. The engine was a fairly stock replacement when these picts were taken except for a little tweaking and a set of headers. Kicked up from its stock 100 HP to about 130 - 140 HP.

The fourth is as it looked when I first bought it, except for the comp wheels and tires. (Note my RX-2 in the upper left of the pict in primer black. It picked up the nickname of "Stealth Mazda").

When purchased (used) it had leaking oil seals inside the rotor housings and tires that showed cord on stock rims. A friend picked me up a good used 12a and installed it and a set of Racing Beat headers in exchange for my ugly, but mechanically good RX-2. He also opened the exhaust ports a bit to better match the pipe diameter of the headers, smoothed the intake ports for a cleaner mixture flow in and went to a flow through air ram assembly. I added hotter coils and surface gap plugs that let me get a better fuel burn. I ran this "7" at Atlanta, GA, Savannah, GA, Sebring, FL and Talladega, AL. I also occasionally snuck it onto the training center course to demonstrate that a driver with equal skill, in a better car can out run the other driver. The cars I was out running were V-8 Mustangs, LTD IIs and Chevy Malibus.





1972 RX-2

1972 Mazda RX-2 Sedan.

White, 12a, 4 spd stick in great mechanical shape.

This is the only picture I ever took of it , probably because the paint was really ugly. I never got around to finishing the clean up of the body as I found the "7" very shortly after buying the "2". It made it to the rough primer stage. I picked it up to tow behind my 32' motor home. The motor home was my home for several years, because I was teaching Law Enforcement Driving Techniques for half of the year at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in GA and spending the other half doing my normal duties as a federal agent at my station in southern CA. I would have kept the "2" as well, but my friend promised to give it a good home and I couldn't pull both cars behind my motor home. My friend lives by Talladega, which has a great road course behind the Nascar track.


1986 RX-7

1986 Mazda RX-7 Coupe.

I bought this "7" as a project car. It had been abused quite badly.
I fixed all of the normal electronic cold solder problems and got it running quite well in its stock configuration.
I never got to the body work as my schedule got crazy and I didn't have the time to work on it. I sold it to another rotary enthusiast, who had the time to restore it.














I have also owned a 1973 RX-3, 1974 RX-4 and a 1974 REPU.

I'll add pictures as I can find them.