An amazing car and a great form of documentation. With 859 miles, it is definitely special.

Shooting cars video:
Bring A Trailer Auction: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1985-mazda-rx-7-43/

 

wow that is pretty legit, orange gauge needles, and even the original oil filter....

i would be very scared to open the radiator cap, but the rest of the thing is amazing

 

This is incredible (madly saving photos for resto library).

 

You guys see it on BAT?

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1985-mazda-rx-7-43/

Bid up to 40k USD pretty quickly.

Certainly a 1 off.

Hard to imagine keeping a car like that for so long, not driving it, and then just selling it.

 

The owner had health issues shortly after buying it. After that it was never driven again.

 

Sold for $47,890. I was expecting a bit more given it's extremely low milage.

 

So carefully looking back over these photos, I made a number of observations - some interesting, perhaps some not:

• Love the stickers still on various parts like headlights, taillight lenses, indicator lenses, diff and radiator.
• How bad is the orange peel on the factory paint that has never been polished?!
• I don't recall seeing that body colour overspray on the sills on other cars. Perhaps I've never look closely under a red one before and the red stands out more but there is paint all over the chassis rails, on top of the body deadener and some shapes that look like masking. It had me scratching my head whether this was indeed new paint.
• The colour of the RX7 on the hatch latch cover is the dark platinum/silver colour, not white or grey like many people think. I've always maintained the darker metallic colour is what mine looked like when it got it over 20 years ago.
• The lower front windscreen trim piece does not have the trim protector rubber along the front. This wasn't on 78-83 models, but I had understood that all 84-85 models had this. It is shown on the parts diagram and I've got photos on it on various original cars from Australia and the UK. I recall mine had it but I had to remove it because it perished so badly. Were US cars different and what is shown on the parts diagram something different?
• This car had the doors closed a long time. You can see the bottom of the drivers door seal has deformed as a result.

 

I have no connection to this car but did inspect it, in person back in March of this year while it was being gone through in preparation for its sale on BaT. The owner(s) have been involved in building / collecting Rotaries for a long time. They purchased this car from the original owner (or their estate) in the fall of 2020. I can confirm that they did not repaint the car or perform any major work / restoration to it. As the ad said, changed the fluids, cleaning / flushing out the carb and general inspection of the car and its systems.

I can't speak for the original owner, but if the story is correct (have no reason to believe it isn't) It doesn't sound like they were in a position or had the need to ever do any major work to it either. I believe the back story on the car and its condition are correct. I too was a little surprised at the small individual stickers on the various lenses and head lights. I purchased my original car brand new in 79 and it never had any of those.

 

These stickers would ordinarily have been removed by the dealer as part of pre-delivery to the customer. I love that that was not done here. My NOS taillamps have the same stickers on them (albeit different part prefix, being the Australian version of the lamps).

I don't seriously think it would be possible to repaint this car and have it present the way it does. I guess I had some cognitive dissonance because the overspray seemed shoddy, but there cannot be a doubt this is original paint. I think the only conclusion I can come to is that the Mazda factory sprayed the body deadener before the body colour and wasn't too fussed about overspray in the process. This is the first time I've noticed it and I've been under a lot of 1st gen RX-7s - so it immediately stuck out to me. My series 3 is virginal underneath and I could have sworn Mazda sprayed the body colour on the chassis first, then body deadener over the top. Maybe not and I just haven't noticed before because the body colour on mine doesn't stick out so much against the natural underbody colour....or maybe the overspray was generally removed from most cars, but not on this one.