bajaman

By George Moore

The Indianapolis Star
January 5, 1992

Twin rotors and twin turbochargers. That potent combination is what Mazda Motors Corp.'s has put into its 1993 RX-7 sports car. The RX-7 series, which began attracting the attention of sports car enthusiasts back in 1978, is the only car on the American market that retains the Wankel rotary-type engine.
The '93 model is going to reach performance levels that will put it on a par with exotic motors cars.
It has power, speed, styling, and reasonable prices for this sort of automobile. It produces 255 horsepower and 217 foot-pounds of torque. It will zoom from zero to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds.
"It's going to be one of the fastest production vehicles made," said Terry Martin, sales manager for Tom Wood Mazda in Indianapolis. "For zero to 60, it's going to be equivalent to the (Chevrolet Corvette) ZR-1."
The completely redesigned two- passenger coupe will be powered by Mazda's version of a twin-rotor Wankel, which it calls a 13-B motor. The dual-rotor power plant utilizes twin sequential turbocharging with intercooling, and is 55 horsepower more powerful than Mazda's former twin-rotor engine that had one turbo. The torque is up from the previous engine's 196 foot-pounds.
"It's going to fit into a market that interests buyers of high-line sports cars," said Jeff Roush, vice president and general manager of Tom Roush Lincoln-Mercury-Mazda. "These are the same guys that buy a (Nissan) 300 ZX, a Corvette or a Porsche."
A major feature contributing to acceleration is the sequential turbocharging. Rather than have both blowers operate full force at the same time, only one is driven via exhaust gases at all times. The other operates at minimal output until more intake manifold pressure is needed.
At that point, valves in the exhaust system opens up and permits the exhaust gas flow to activate the second turbo. The sequential method of alternately driving the turbos permits the use of a smaller turbocharger that is quicker to build up intake manifold pressure at lower engine speeds.
The vehicle is just slightly shorter in wheelbase and overall length than the car it replaces, and the overall height is just a touch lower.
The resulting appearance is slick. Unfortunately, Indianapolis-area residents will have to wait until spring to get a hands-on view at the local Speedway, Tom Wood and Tom Roush dealerships. If you can't wait, head for Los Angeles or Detroit.
The new RX-7 is on display now at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show in the Los Angeles Convention Center. That show runs through next Sunday. The RX-7 makes its Midwest debut Saturday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit's Cobo Exposition Center. The Detroit show runs through Jan. 19.
"We begged them to give it to us for our (Indianapolis) show," Martin said. "But they didn't come through."
The car being presented at Los Angeles and Detroit is a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive coupe. It has a 95.5-inch wheelbase, an overall length of 168.5 inches, and a height of 48.4 inches. The two-seater is a lean, mean machine with a low hood profile for minimum air drag. It weighs about 2,800 pounds.
The coupe is smaller than the 300 ZX and the Dodge Stealth/Mitsubishi 3000GT. Mazda had the good sense to retain rear-wheel drive, as running 255 horsepower through the front wheels of a 2,800-pound sports car is apt to produce something akin to a Wild West show when coming off the line on full throttle.
The driver/passenger compartment looks like a race-car cockpit with luxurious features.
The bucket seats encase the body for full lateral support in high-speed turns. The wheel seems to leap up into your hands. A stub-like gearshift lever is immediately off the driver's right hand.
The tachometer and speedometer are both large, round gauges.
The tach, which has a sweep hand, is the highest gauge in the instrument panel. It is directly in front of thedriver. The speedometer is mounted slightly lower and to the right of the tach.
Dealers project th e RX-7 will account for between 5 percent and 10 percent of their overall Mazda sales. And the cost at this point is pure speculation.
"I don't think they can get it under 30 ($30,000)," Martin said. "I'm looking for something around $31,000 to $32,000."
"The base price might be under $30,000," Roush said. "But by the time you get some options on it the car will be over that."
Those numbers still will give Mazda an extremely competitive position. There are a number of sports cars with comparable performance characteristics, and most of them carry window stickers far above the RX-7's $30,000 mark

bajaman

By Paul Dean

LATimes.com
April 24, 1992

Sports cars are losing their image as mildly amusing poseurs and moving closer to the punch and duty of lightly detuned race cars.
Mazda's completely redesigned and thoroughly exhilarating RX-7 is typical of that evolution.
It is a car one pulls on like Nomex coveralls. Legs thread through a marginally narrower tunnel toward pedals that are bare metal, dimpled and drilled to provide maximum feel for sensitive soles. Even with two persons aboard, the snug seating and a broad center console give the driver a sense of being surrounded by a monocoque cocoon; of being alone and quite at home on the center line of heady turbocharged thrust.
By no coincidence at all, showroom-fresh RX-7s--with little modification beyond safety and speed tweaks--are running this season's Bridgestone Supercar Championship, a seven-race national series that boldly attempts to restore weekend racing to its stock and relatively inexpensive roots.
The RX-7 certainly deserves a place among the Porsche 911s and Corvettes of that series. This car accelerates quicker than a Ferrari Testarossa, and its top end is faster than the Nissan 300ZX Turbo.
Yet those are only numbers and fractional separations.
A thoroughbred race car, no matter the maneuver, must offer unremitting balance throughout its performance range. Suspensions must be built to track flat and with a minimum of computerized gimmickry, so that tires set broad patches against the road and grip like Velcro. Power must be an explosion and an instantaneous winner over weight; braking should be capable of taming triple-digit speeds without frying pads and flat-spotting tires, and steering must be a quick, precise extension of the driver's thought process.
Above all, as with surfboards or stallions, there should be an unbreakable, confident bond between vehicle and driver. Such integrity of ride is certainly a most tangible asset of the RX-7.
That ride comes in two versions.
The base RX-7 is a touring version with slightly softer shocks and bushings and less aggressive tires. An additional $2,000 buys the stiffer R1--badged as such and wearing saucy front and rear spoilers. It comes with dual oil coolers, more competitive tires and shocks that on even rippled surfaces present a serious threat to anyone with older crowns on their molars.
Purists, of course, insist that the RX-7 is not a sports car. It has a Wankel rotary engine, therefore innards that go around instead of up and down. No wire wheels. The RX-7 has a hard lid and some sprawling room behind the seats, and this kind of layout should make it a Grand Touring car.
Those mustachioed precisians might like to note, however, that when bolted to a pair of sequential turbochargers, the rotary mechanicals of the RX-7extract a hefty 225 horsepower from a relatively puny 1.3-liter engine.
The RX-7's power-to-weight ratio is superior to that of sports cars costing twice as much. It streaks through the quarter-mile pylons at 100 m.p.h. in 14 seconds. The estimated top speed is 158 m.p.h.
So sports car or GT? Ketch or yawl? Ground or shredded sirloin for your steak tartare? It should matter to no one but the person indulging the preference.
Visually, the RX-7 has the lean, free-flowing look of thin metal stretched around stiffeners, the trademark of any monocoque design where frame and body are one. This unibody construction seems to allow gentler curves and finer sculpturing that in the RX-7 smacks of C Group racers or some gun metal gray concept from Mercedes or Porsche.
It is a low, beautifully proportioned car with five-spoke aluminum wheels, Le Mans side mirrors, a soft shape and a stance with a single snarl: I exist to bring a little humility to the life of everything else on the road.
If it weren't for the vulgarity of pop-up headlights--an '80s habit that happily is diminishing--the shap of the RX-7 would be world class, day or night.
This is, however, a vehicle of rather singular dimension.
Although perfectly mannered, the RX-7 is restless as a commuter car. Unless your commute be Paris-Lyons.
There is space for only two people, two overnight cases, two tennis rackets, two microwave dinners and precious little else in trunk that is only 6 cubic feet--less than half the boot room of a Ford Tempo.
The air bag is on the driver's side only.
And at a base price of $31,300, the RX-7 is fiscal eons removed from its introductory years, when it was a bargain at $8,000.
Of course, the 1978 car was only 100 horsepower, and its then unrefined rotary engine went into automatic drool when passing a gas station.
This 1993 car has quenched that thirst. The RX-7 has gone aerospace through a weight reduction program extending even to a whiskery dip stick and an 18-pound aluminum hood. This leaner Mazda is 600 pounds lighter than Chevrolet's Corvette and 700 pounds under Nissan's 300ZX.
And now there are 255 horses pulling this featherweight.
The interior--with leather-faced seats on the R1--curves and flows as well as the exterior. The steering wheel is a mite smaller than most and gives the leather doughnut feel of a Formula car. Instruments are analog and chrome-rimmed beneath an oversized cowl--another touch of the track.
It has been established that performance and handling of the RX-7--save for slight lumps in acceleration apparently caused by hyperactive turbocharging--are simply as good as they get.
It hurtles in any gear, even with automatic transmission. It has limits way beyond those of even excellent amateur drivers. And it will show the average motorist what this intangible zip of driving, this magic mating between pilot and machine on a winding road, is really all about.
Add to all this the results of recent comparison testing by Car & Driver magazine. The RX-7 placed second by a very small margin behind the incomparable Nissan 300ZX Turbo. More significantly, the RX-7scored highest in braking, handling and ergonomics, finishing ahead of the stiff-upper Lotus Elan and the muscular, hairy-chested Corvette.
It rated a perfect 10 in the category of fun driving.
If the RX-7 does not become an Rx for success, blame the economy. Or maybe some lingering suspicion of rotary engines.
But not the car as a performance package.
1993 Mazda RX-7
The Good Racer's edge in looks and performance. High on mechanical purity, low on gadgets. Fuel guzzling has evaporated. Snug, nimble, highly personal transportation.
The Bad No longer a budget sports car. Acceleration snag from excitable turbos.
The Ugly Not a bit of it.
Cost Base: $31,300. As tested: $34,790 (includes performance handling package, leather-faced seats, a larm, cruise control, antilock brakes, driver's side air bag, five-speaker Bose sound system with CD, power sunroof, etc.).
Engine 2-rotor, inline rotary engine with sequential, twin, intercooled turbochargers developing 225 horsepower.
Type Rear-drive, front-engine, two-seater sports/GTcar.
Performance 0-60 m.p.h., as tested, with 5-speed manual, 6 seconds. Top speed, manufacturer's estimate, 158 m.p.h. Fuel economy, EPA, city-highway, 17 and 25 m.p.g.
Curb Weight 2,870 pounds.

bajaman

By Richard Truett

Orlando Sentinel
April 16, 1992

The last time I drove a Mazda RX-7, a 1990 convertible, I came away thinking it was the worst car I had ever tested.
I still feel that way about the old RX-7.
Expensive, heavy, slow, loud, poorly designed and with a big appetite for unleaded gasoline, the second-generation RX-7 was a lousy excuse for a sports car.
When news of a redesigned and re-engineered RX-7 filtered out of Mazda last year, it didn't do much to quicken my pulse.
For one thing, the shape of the two previous RX-7s - the 1979 to '85 models and the 1986 to '91 models - stole dramatically from other sports cars, such as Porsche. So, why expect anything fresh, original and dramatic the third time around?
For another, I have never been convinced that a rotary engine is better than a piston engine. There's little power in the lower RPM ranges, and a rotary can be cranky.
So when the new RX-7, released as a 1993 model, landed in the parking lot, it sat for a few days until I finished up with a truck.
Big mistake.
I shouldn't have waited, because I enjoyed every pulse-quickening second behind the wheel.
One week and 500 miles later, I am convinced that Mazda has pulled off an engineering and styling miracle with the new RX-7.
This is a fabulous sports car that addresses every one of the shortcomings of the vehicle it replaces.
The new RX-7 looks like a high-priced exotic, and it attracted crowds wherever I parked.
PERFORMANCE
There probably is no car in the world that will get you to 60 mph as quietly as the new RX-7, which boasts a 255-horsepower twin-turbocharged rotary engine.
No matter how hard you drive it, the engine makes little more than a slight humming noise. Even the exhaust is quiet.
Acceleration is brutally fast. Mazda claims a zero-to-60 mph time of just 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 156 mph. Few cars under $60,000 can match this performance.
The RX-7's two turbochargers don't work conventionally.
On piston-engine cars such as the Dodge Stealth RT or Mitsubishi 3000 GT, both turbochargers are driven by exhaust gases from the same side of the engine and both turbochargers run at the same time.
However, in the RX-7 the turbochargers are sequential, meaning that one runs up to a certain rpm and then the other takes over until the engine reaches its 8,000 rpm limit. The operation is governed by a computer that eliminates turbo lag, a slight hesitation upon fast acceleration.
The test car came with a five-speed manual transmission. A four-speed automatic is optional.
HANDLING
The new RX-7 weighs in at 2,789 pounds, 202pounds lighter than last year's turbocharged model.
Mazda engineers achieved a 50/50 weight distribution, meaning that half the car's weight is on the front wheels and half is on the rear. That helps make the RX-7 a sports car that you can push hard through corners.
The suspension system is firm, but because the Mazda i s very stiff and the leather seats so snug and comfortable, the RX-7 is a breeze to drive over rough pavement.
All RX-7s come with anti-lock four-wheel ventilated disc brakes that are more than able to cope with the car's performance potential. Repeated fast stops proved them to be fade-free, meaning that when the brakes get hot, they don't lose efficiency.
The power-assisted rack and pinion steering is engine-speed-sensitive, so it takes more effort to turn the wheel at higher rpm's.
FIT AND FINISH
There's no question about it: Mazda hit a home run with the RX-7's aggressive European-influenced styling, and the latest version doesn't steal a thing from anyone else's sports car.
The big curved rear window allows for unobstructed rear vision, a definite improvement over the old car.
Inside, it's a tight fit. Those taller than 6 feet might find it difficult to get comfortable, with head, foot and leg room extremely tight.
The test car feat red red leather bucket seats that were quite firm, but supportive and comfortable on a long trip.
I found a few things about the new RX-7 a bit odd.
The inside door panels do not match - that is, the driver's side differs in styling and color from the passenger's side. The test car came with a Bose Acoustic Wave Machine that looked like a goofy prop from Lost in Space.
With black tubes snaking though the hatch area and swallowing much of the storage room, I wonder why Mazda chose this sound system. It didn't sound much different from a regular stereo.
These are just quibbles, though. Overall, the new RX-7 will enhance Mazda's reputation for building great sports cars.

grimple1

iTrader: (1)

no love for the FC in orlando. wow that's a pretty brutal introduction.

Supernaut

iTrader: (83)

Where did you find these? I thought I read most of the articles on the web.

bajaman

The first article I posted I had seen in a car mag like Road & Track or MOTORTREND, way back in the day. I had looked and looked for it again, and by golly, when Gordon and I got talking about whether the power steering on the FD was speed-sensitive or RPM sensitive (it is the latter, by the way), I had to do some searching and I found these articles, here using BING.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=speed+s...sp&sp=1&sc=8-2

If you go to the last one on the first page, it has the 4 reviews on a CARS.COM site.

Sgtblue

iTrader: (16)

Nice find Greg. Thanks.

ptrhahn

iTrader: (9)

I love how they always describe the sequential twin turbo action incorrectly... it's not one after the other, it's one then both, and they aren't significantly different sizes.