After I wrecked my Integra driving like an idiot, circa 2004, I found a second-gen RX-7 for sale and jumped on it. This ’89 Mazda cost less than half of what insurance valued my ’96 Acura at, if you can believe it. So I had extra coin for wheels, subwoofers, and decorative wire loom… all of which I bought, naturally. I sure did love that car, even though my taste in mods was a little goofy.
Cars: 1989 Mazda RX-7 GTU
Location: New England Dragway, Epping, New Hampshire
Photog: Andrew P. Collins
Camera: Canon PowerShot S200
This picture’s from an event called “Street Warriorz” or “Import Attack” or “Samurai Car Assault” or some goofy shit like that. My friend was racing his ’99 Civic Si in a drag-racing bracket and I posted up at the car show (even back then I liked standing around and looking at cars as much as driving them).
As you can see, I thought it’d be cool to add some flair to my display… hence the banner and the jerry can. Yeah, I’m not sure why I was compelled to put the gas can out. Maybe I was really early on the overland-look trend?
The car was not particularly quick, it was a base model (GTU) non-turbo, but it did have rear-wheel drive and a manual transmission. Plus, of course, a pretty low curb weight. The wheels were genuine Racing Harts and absolutely enormous – I ran a staggered setup; the rears were a comical 10 inches wide and the fronts were eight. Good grief, they must have weighed a ton. My stereo was not exactly light either, the subwoofers and box they lived in took two people to load into the hatch. It made “Don’t Say Nuthin'” by The Roots sound absolutely eardrum-exploding though.
I definitely would do a very different list of modifications if I had this car now, but I had my fun with it. I still get excited every time I see a second-gen FC RX-7, especially the later face-lifted S5 models like this one was.
