I remember your car. About 6 years ago Stu All introduced you and your car in one of his weekly Rotary emails. Very well done. Originally, wasn't it Sunbeam Silver?

 

I have very few pictures of the car with the top on, I tend to only drive the car when it is dry (and like to show off the open roof :-))
these first two pictures are from the series produced for the said interview


This picture shows the top when we have painted the edges and the inside, so before the complete body went to the paint shop

part of the locking mechanism

do-it-yourself production of the mould, later used to make the polyester top. curves and edges were added later by glueing foam to the inside of the mould

 

Hi Banzai, indeed. Stu was kind enough to introduce me into his small group of rotorheads. sadly he passed away too soon.
I think you are mistaken about the color, but might be explainable. My first RX-7 in 1983 was sunbeam silver (K3). that was also an SA model, from '79.
This particular car has had several colors before the Tornado Silver. I am sure that is was green some time before, but I have seen other colors too while sanding it down. but no sunbeam silver.

Cheers, Jurgen

 

@Targa_Rotary Nice targa. Are you able to reproduce the targa top should you need to (assuming you still have the mold)? You just need to add the red stripe underneath the side moldings to match the 1:43 model!

 

Hi, I am sorry but something went wrong while producing the top. It was my first experience with polyester. while the mold came perfectly from the roof and in spite of the fact that I used plenty of wax in the mold before putting the gelcoat in, followed by fiberglass and resin, the separation of top and mold prooved to be very difficult. So I had to destroy the mold completely, and still some parts of the gelcoat were missing from the top. so that needed rework before I could paint it. in hindsight, I guess that I had to polish the inside of the mold before waxing- and using it.

Yes, and the little red stripe is added to the 1:1 model after the interview. but in the 1:1 model the stripe is a little less obvious. it was very hard to scale that down to 1:43.

 

This is the only Targa that I am aware of in Australia. It was produced by Penfold Mazda in Melbourne which was a very innovative Mazda dealer. Penfold also produced the prototype RX7 Mirage which was the genesis for the Mazda RX7 Mirage and the Moffat RX7s.




Penfold Mazda Targa

Featured Targa in Aust Motor Manual. Note excellent Series 1 or SA front air dam. I've always considered this the best air dam and it fits on the FB.

 

I found photos of this car in Japan. I am unsure if Japan produced Targas or this is a US import converted to RHD?

 

thanks for this picture. Nice that a dealer, in those days, initiated such a conversion!

 

As far as I know, Mazda never produced real Targa's. And I don't think that anyone would perform a LHD to RHD conversion? that is a lot of work and includes (amongst lots of other things) exchange of the dashboard.
but thanks for this picture too, I will add it to my collection :-)