Middling: 1987 Mazda RX-7
The middle child syndrome is a pop psychology construct where the middle child of a family of three siblings feels excluded by virtue of their birth order. The older sibling gets all the responsibility and the younger sibling is treated as the baby. Thus it is the same for cars, where the first and third generation RX-7 is lauded and the middle RX-7 is forgotten. Find this 1987 Mazda RX-7 for sale in Albany, OR for $4,895 via craigslist.
Tip from Rock On!.
The second generation RX-7 replaced the first generation in 1985. This car has had its rotary 13B replaced 40K miles ago. It’s a second owner car, owned by the seller for 21 years. The chassis has 176K miles on it and the ad has a long list (22 items) of work done over the last 10 years.
Being an Oregon car means the claim of no rust and original paint is probably true. The interior looks to be in good shape and the owner only lists a couple of issues, the worst of which is a starting issue. I don’t see a new starter in the list of work, so it may be due for a new one after 176K miles.
The car is rolling on ugly 80’s wheels with “nearly new” Costso tires. The seller also includes 5 of the original phone dial wheels. If I bought this car, I’d swap those on stat.
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Gianni is Daily Turismo’s Pacific Northwest correspondent.
I'd rank this as overpriced by about $1.7k. The asking price is in the Turbo2 range. It's a base model car. Earlyish 87 production. The only real pluses on it I see are the blue interior (rather than red) and clean body. Without photos of the "frame rails" it's hard to see how nice the body really is though. It's a 4 lug car which means that it doesn't have the much nicer and capable brakes that the 5 lug cars get. Also most likely will not have a LSD. I'd also consider the R132 conversion a negative. These cars really do need R12 if you're going to be using the AC somewhere hot.