Series4

In the late 1970s when Mazda whipped the covers off their latest rotary weapon, the RX-7, it was clear the design recipe was following in the footsteps of the original Datsun 240 zed car. A smallish two-door coupe with a long bonnet, short tail, rear hatch, front engine and rear drive with driver and front passenger placed with a rearward bias. When the time came to replace the much-loved Series III RX-7 in 1986, Mazda was looking at new frontiers with the Porsche 944 in its sights.

To start with the Series 4 RX-7 was a completely new design, with a ‘Euro-style’ body, as Mazda called it. Gone was the almost delicate silhouette of the first three RX-7 series and in its place a substantially bulkier looking car and while the dimensions weren’t dissimilar to the previous generation car, it tipped the scales at 1270kg a whopping 175kg more.

Series 5

Switching to Mazda’s 13B rotary engine delivered a 22 percent torque boost, with 182Nm arriving at 3000rpm. The new car also ran cooler and offered better economy. Fuel injection became standard and incorporated two-stage fuel delivery with a microprocessor. The vibration and resonance issues that plagued early rotaries were reduced by introduction of revised engine mounts.