Hey all,

I'm about to buy my uncle's 1978 series 1 RX7.. It's a pretty good car and has been in the family for most of it's life.

Trying to find out it's history and if it is a Savanna GT? Also if there's anyone who knows anything about Australia's Bathurst race history with RX7's, was there prototype's that arrived early '87, '88 to race?

Any input would be awesome!!

Thanks

 

i can't answer the question, what we know is that the US vins are SA22C-5xxxxx, and the JDM vins are SA22C-1xxxxx. we do not know if Australia got a different vin series, or how you would tell an AUS car from a JDM car.

fun fact, the S1, 2, 3 (Japan would say version, V1, 2, etc) are in the Vin, SA22C-1xxxxx is an S1/V1, SA22C-2xxxxx is a series 2, v2, SA22C-3xxxxx is an S3.

this doesn't work in the US, except for the FD

 

As reference for those finding this thread in future, the question has been answered here: AusRotary.com ? View topic - Is it an 1978 RX7 Savanna GT???

Also, in Australia:

series 1 are SA22C-541117 > SA22C-650000,
series 2 are SA22C-650001 > SA22C-700000,
series 3 are SA22C-700001 >onwards

as described here: http://ausrotary.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=157823

 

its interesting that your S1 cars are in a similar vin series to the US cars, one would think that they, being RHD, would be in the JDM series

 

I believe this may have followed earlier chassis numbering conventions where they had one system of numbering for JDM and one set of numbering for export market. From what I understand, it is impossible to tell which country or specification level an export series 1 is based on the 6 digit production number. I suspect the export ones were probably done in batches so you might found 1,000 numbers in a range where designated for Australia, the next 2,000 were LHD etc.

Everything was stuffed up in 1981 because the US mandated the standardised 17 digit VIN. I suspect other countries did at the same time as well (or were about to), hence why you have UK cars with an FB VIN despite being the closest specced to Australian models, which got the weird SA22C-65+ and 70+ 11 digit chassis numbers. Being the backwards country we sometimes are, we didn't mandate VINs until 1986. There was a lot of change that year, including new emissions laws requiring catalytic converters etc.

 

good point that is exactly it.

in 1981, things get better though, you know the US car is US, because its a JM1FB33xxx, and the European cars are JMZ. so we know the market, although with the US cars its not hard to tell