bajaman

CarFirst-half 2004 salesBase price
• Ford F-Series432,969$19,920• Chevrolet Silverado322,907$19,485• Dodge Ram pickup223,609$20,365• Toyota Camry213,625$19,560• Honda Accord192,106$16,390• Ford Explorer168,059$23,690• Honda Civic162,483$13,500• Ford Taurus144,035$20,320• Chevrolet Impala139,460$22,395• Dodge Caravan131,367$18,995
You are indeed right sir, I stand corrected! Here are the numbers of the top selling vehicles for the first HALF of 20004.

pugg57

soo... if there are so few left... this begs the question, does rarity in any way effect the car's "collector" status on a state registration level?

bajaman

Good question. And at what point does rarity/collector value start overtaking "bluebook" value?

I remember finding a pristine 1973 Jaguar E-Type back in 1978, this car was a V12 car, 4 speed, chrome wire wheels....the works. The vice-president of Coleman here in Wichita owned it and even though the car was not for sale (it was in storage) I impressed him with my knowledge and passion for the car and he agreed he would sell it to me for $10K.
Now, I went to 26 different financial institutions attempting to secure funds to purchase this car, yet they all cited the blue book value of $4,750. Even when I showed them ads from car mags and newspapers that showed this same car was selling for $20K - $30K, it swayed them not.

I really feel that at some point the rarity of the FD is going to start having a profound effect on their value. As we see here in this forum, there are several that are 'killed' each year, and we all know how many there were to start with. So surely at some point, perhaps it will be another 5 - 10 years or so, the cars will start costing far more than they currently do. This is a strange time for the FD, its cost has fallen so that many, many more people are able to purchase one. But it seems that most of these purchases are by young drivers that have a disproportionately high ratio of destroying the cars. So, the lowered cost is directly contributing to increased loss of viable automobiles. I think there will come a time in the near future when the demand will exceed the availability, and bring about a renaissance in the collector value.

rotorsownyou7

Wonder what they are going to do with it.

APEXL8T

Sales of RX7 in the US by calender year.Sports Car Color History, Mazda RX7
Pg.126
1992............6,006
1993............5,062
book publishes so 94-96 no numbers.

Icemastr

iTrader: (2)

Let is sit there.

TwinTurbo'D

probably what i do with my rx7 that is just sitting, I stare in admiration

SpoolinRX

iTrader: (6)

If that aint some irony i don’t know what is, that’s what they are all doin anyway

RotorMotor

iTrader: (5)

i seem to see one or two every few weeks... there are alot in nor-cal it seems

Valkyrie

On a good day, I can see 2-3 in just one area of Tokyo (Akihabara for example).

If I'm out in the city for more than an hour or two, I can probably see at least one.

Which is to say there's an arseload of FDs in Japan. I've still only seen 5 or so FCs (lots of Mk III Supras though, even even more Mk IV's), and you can buy a good one for ~$2000 (where as decent FD's start at $8K).

wstrohm

Wonder how many original owners? We bought our '94 new...

---- Bill

Railgun

This may be overkill, but this is what I just sent to (and suprisingly received from within 5 minutes) the Indiana BMV about this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Indiana BMV

Dear Christian:

Thank you for your Web site inquiry. Your message has been forwarded to this department for response.

This information is available to your organization. To obtain it, you will need to submit a written request, on your organization's letterhead, and mail it to:

Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles
Attn: Legal Division
Indiana Government Center North, Room N440 100 North Senate Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46204

Or fax your request to the attention of the Legal Division at:
317-233-3135.

After your request is approved, the Legal Division will contact you with a cost estimate of creating a computer program to retrieve that information from our databases.

Thank you again for your inquiry.

Sincerely,

Communication Department

Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles

If in fact this is in a DB, I don't know why they'd have to write anything, but I'm curious to the cost. Obviously I don't want to do this 50 times, so unless there's an easier way, would you guys like to assist in your respective states? I don't know how else to get this info.

Christian

pugg57

now that's sweet ****

moconnor

iTrader: (14)

They would not have to write anything - some DB admin should be able to generate an appropriate query in 5 minutes.

However, my guess is that there is some old codger who has been working at the DMV since the 6th century and is the only one who understands their 5th century database. His response to any request for information is to estimate that it will take several weeks to generate the specialized query module to get the required information and that he probably will not be able to get to it for several months because he is busy. He probably gets paid $40k per year and does about 15 minutes of work per week.

Also, I recall reading in another thread that Pettit got the total US numbers a few years ago (presumably as part of a market research effort). You could email them to see how they got their numbers.

Railgun

Cool. I've left a message with Cameron about it. Thanks. I talked to Jeff and he mentioned that they used some marketing company then to get some info about this, but he can't remeber who it was. Even with addresses, guess it was pretty cheap. They used it for a mailing. Once I get that info, I'll see how that company went about getting that info. I will be interesting to see how the estimates for losses pans out.

JConn2299

Me too. There's got to be fewer and fewer of us. Maybe you should start a new thread on this. (I'm too lazy tonight.)

darkphantom

iTrader: (2)

Now dont forget about that guy on ebay that be selling those right hand drive rx7's from the UK! and also my car was reserected from the dead (engine fire). so thats one less RX-7 to be trashed.

edv

SELECT count(*) from vehicles where man='Mazda' AND vin like '%FD3%' and status='clear'

jeffrored92

I'd love to know how many are in Australia.

I've seen 3 FD's on the road in the past 5 or 6 years in Perth, Australia. They were all black so it could have been the same one.

I saw two FD's at the car dealer I bought mine from. One now lives in my garage

I found somewhere on the forum that around 460 FD's were sold in Australia between 1992 and 1998. Don't know how many series 8 have been imported, but doubt it would be many.

darkphantom

iTrader: (2)

THE CARS IN AUSTRALIA. Are they left or right hand drive

jeffrored92

Right hand drive.

SpeedKing

iTrader: (4)

RHD, and BTW ********, when are you going to post pics of your 20B and RX-8 tranny?

cpa7man

iTrader: (2)

Then if you **** like me you can break the car down furthur down the chain. Mine is one of 118 made in 94. I wonder how many of that 118 are still on the road?

darkphantom

iTrader: (2)

dont have none but if i do have some they will be at home. Dont get off til midnight

JConn2299

The answer for this is to start a 3rd Gen RX-7 registry. It's been done for a number of cars, Shelby probably being the most well known. Takes some fanatic willing to do an enormous amount of work. If you want to make the car truly collectible, it's one thing that will help.