Back in 2003 I finally felt it was time to get a car of my own. I'd been insured on various others (a variety of escorts, and a golf) over the preceding years, but it's always awkward having to share it. My initial plan of something fun to drive but under 5k lasted a whole month before I gave up and bought the car I really wanted.
It's a 3rd generation Mazda RX7 (FD3s) (more pictures here), and this particular car, a July '97 model, was bought at auction in Tokyo and imported to the UK by Motormall, an agent based near Folkestone. I have precisely zero regrets about this car. You can find technical data here. The short version is, in stock form, it's a 1.3l twin turbo rotary engine producing 265bhp at the flywheel. With the bulk of the engine mounted behind the front wheels, it manages a perfect 50:50 weight distribution, and it handles superbly. 0-60 times seem to vary depending on the source, but there's general agreement that they stand near the five second mark. Stock top speed is usually listed as 165mph.
It's very much a race car for the road, in that while it does have some comforts (air conditioning, for example) it lacks most of the driver aids that other rear wheel drive cars offer. Things like traction and stability control aren't even an option, and hence, like most rwd cars it's something of a handful in the wet. My car's a type RS model, which differs slightly from the base car. The major differences are stiffer suspension as stock, 17" lightweight alloy wheels, bigger brakes, a Momo wheel and a Torsen LSD, 4.3 Final. They're not kidding about the stiffer suspension either. You can literally feel every bump in the road, which means driving around Thanet isn't a lot of fun at all. The roads here are awful, and around town I'm managing single figure mpg. It's also low enough to cause problems with some speed bumps. Fortunately, I still have a Golf to drive to work, which means the FD is a weekend and "for fun" car. I managed to get on track at Silverstone with it as part of TRAX2003, and it's easily capable of hitting 160mph up the main straight. Track days are definitely something I'd like to do more of in the future.
I'm currently a member of two UK-based car clubs, MazdaRotaryClub (any rotary-engined car) and FDUK (FDs only). Both sites have some pictures of events attended this year. In mid-April 2004, FDUK made a trip to G-Force Motorsport to get some real power figures for our cars. I've now got graphs for air/fuel ratio vs revs, tractive effort vs revs, boost vs revs and torque vs revs, as well as bhp figures at both wheels (238.2) and flywheel (298.2 - extrapolated based on engine dyno work elsewhere I think).
