A friend has a Yellow '79 that he bought new sitting in his garage. It's in need of some restoration and he just wants to know if it's worth the effort.

Anyone know how many Yellow's were built in 1979? Is this in fact a rare RX-7?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Tex

 

As far as yellow 79s go it's hard to say how rare the car is. The fact that it's a 79 alone is a bonus because it's the first itteration of the car. Check the door plate and see the actual date of manufacture, it could even be a 78 manufacture date which would make it more rare. If it is in real good shape and not rusted or to many original parts missing it's definately worth restoring. A well taken care of RX-7 will give many years of fun and a restored 79 will also get many stares and great comments. Post pictures if you can I'd love to see them a yellow 7 with black interior is a hot looking car!! Enjoy.

 

I would have to agree with 7addict about checking the "birth date" of car.
Tell your friend congrats on the find. I hope he has fun with it.

7addict - I'm actually in the process of making my '83 have a yellow paint job and a black interior.

 

ERROR 402 Make sure the paint is up to snuff. A bad yellow can look very cheap, but a Audi yellow deep and clear coated will be hot! Some black sparco seats with yellow bolsters, a yellow leather shift boot and some black floor mats with yellow piping!! Now your talking, oh yeah a suede steering wheel with yellow accents, now I'm drooling. Sorry just got carried away with some ideas, love to see pics. Good luck.

 

7addict - thanks for the advice. I actually was thinking the same thing. The Audi deep yellow is kewl. Yeah, I'm looking around my area to see where I can find a good place to get the paint done. I don't want it to chip or flake off. I love my 7 too much to let that happen. (I just wish the previous owner felt that way about it too.) I'm doing alot of restoration work on my 7 at the moment. Originally it has a coffe stain white as exterior paint and brown/red interior. The intertior is now partially black, the dash is still original because it was in bad shape, but I just picked up a dash from the junk yard and it's mint!!! Yeah, I'll post pics as soon as I'm done.

 

if the car was built early, it won't have a passenger side mirror. I have a '79 that was built in '78 and it never had one. There's some page out there, I don't have the link, that gives all the differences.

 

Plus the hood prop rod is on the passenger side (driver side in Japan).

 

I have a friend that has a 77 that was one of the first 300 that mazda made to releas to a special test group. It is a right hand driver and is a 4 seater. that would qualify as a rare one. It is one of only 2 that are known to still exist. A while back mazda north america tried to trade him a 95 FD for it but he wouldn't do it. Any ways on the 79, I would say that if it had like less than 20k orginal and was realy good then hold on to it for another 10 + years and it will be worth something but we have to realize that the made like 495 thousand so it's going to take forever for these to become a collectors item and even then they will be in the junkyards. Peace.

CJG

 

Wow, that sounds like an awesome car... kinda makes my 78 Savanna (#4953) pale by comparison .