1994 Mazda RX-7 Inside the G-Games- The Ultimate Handling Machine

Final Score: 110.8 pts.1 First Place

Funny thing about making up the rules to your own contest; it really puts the pressure on you to win. Given we created the contest, you might expect that we'd tailor the G-Games to favor our own car. Perhaps you give us too much credit. In reality, we selected the tests long before we picked a car, spending months scratching our heads without a clue of where to find the ideal cornering machine.

The perfect candidate would, naturally, be light, carry its weight in perfect balance on all four wheels, and, most likely, pack a pair of wishbones at each corner. The best skidpad performance we've ever measured came from just such a car-a Racing Beat-prepared '00 Miata that posted an incredible 1.1g. The skidpad, however, was the only one of our three tests where horsepower didn't matter. No matter how much we wanted this to be a pure handling test, in the real world, horsepower is always a critical element of handling, and the Miata just doesn't pack enough of it.

The road course, despite being quite short and as tight as possible, still has an uphill straight and still relies on power for corner exit speed. Even our standard six-cone slalom becomes a drag race after the fourth cone. While forced induction easily adds thrust to the Miata's repetoire, its flexy chassis makes handling a little too playful when big dollops of torque enter the equation. We needed the Miata's cornering prowess in a package that could both deliver and cope with far more power.

The third-generation FD3S RX-7 is the only car we've ever tested that combines the Miata's agility with real, serious thrust. To drive a FD is to drive a mature, athletic Miata. But the RX-7 has a curse. Its biggest strength is, ironically, also its greatest weakness. The compact, powerful and technologically dense sequential twin-turbo 13B rotary is a powerhouse. Its compact size affords the RX-7 its Miata-like balance, and its uncanny rotary breathing ability makes it incredibly powerful.

But it's also a bomb. Find an FD RX-7 with its original engine in place and you've found a car that has never been driven to its potential. The turbo rotary runs incredibly hot, its cooling system is notoriously ineffective, and its engine management system stubbornly non-adaptive. One ping and it's all over.

With our G-Games scheduled for August in the high desert, a hot-running bomb is a dangerous car to bring.

Nervous, but unwavering in our conviction that the RX-7 would reign supreme, we scoured the rotary community, finally stumbling upon Wolfgang Hoeck, an avid autocrosser and a customer of Tri-Point Engineering, a shop we remember well for its all-conquering ASP Solo2 national champion RX-7 we featured way back in June of '97. What struck us about Hoeck's car, besides the fact it has scored him an impressive record of Solo2 and ProSolo championships, was the fact his engine was nearly stock. Sporting only a GReddy intercooler and a Tri-Point cold-air intake, it seemed mild enough to actually stand a chance of survival. Hoeck's track record backs this. He's only on his second engine, a statistic that can be considered good only in the strange realm of boosted rotaries.

It didn't hurt that he was willing, perhaps even eager, in the subdued manner you might expect of an Austrian scientist (which he is), to leave work and spend the day watching us thrash on his baby only two days before his own wedding.

Hoeck's car looks relatively unimpressive on paper, but every tweak is well thought out, painstakingly developed, and focused on the task at hand.

The car is carried by double-adjustable Koni coil-overs at all four corners, the front anti-roll bar is adjustable, while the rear is stock. That's all. You don't have to change much to make an FD a handling champ.

Each contact patch is the interface of pavement and an impressively wide 275/40ZR-17 tire mounted on custom 17x10-inch Complete Custom wheels. Normally that tire is a gummy Hoosier A3S03, but our rules dictated a fair fight, so, naturally, G-Force KDs in the same size took their place.

Taking to the track, Hoeck's RX-7 feels just as we had hoped. The steering has the same directness and immediacy as a Miata, but with a level of precision only possible in the stiffer chassis of a coupe. Acceleration (with one eye firmly on the temperature gauge) is just as strong as it needs to be.

With a uniquely smooth, gutteral honk trumpeting from below its delicate, aluminum hood, Hoeck's RX-7 has just enough power to be easily throttle steered, but never so much as to make the right pedal a menace.

Aside from its nearly perfect specs, what really makes Hoeck's car a stand out performer is the fact that it's completely dialed in. Slap all the adjustable parts in the world onto your car and it will do you no good unless you actually adjust them properly.

Being properly dialed-in means being easy to drive, and this car is a cakewalk. The few bumps and ripples littering the Willow Springs skidpad have little effect, the Konis sucking them up just as they should. A Sparco Pro2000 driver's seat, five-point harness and Momo steering wheel help too, combating g-forces so you can concentrate on the task at hand.

First time around the pad, the numbers were jaw dropping. The 1.01g average on brand-new, full-tread tires that barely had the mold release scuffed off. And on Hades' own skidpad no less-the tarmac temperature after soaking up the full fury of the desert sun was a mind-blowing 140 degrees.

Still, it felt like there was more grip to be had. The RX-7 understeered partway around the pad, requiring some minor provocation to get the tail involved. The ideal skidpad car, strangely, would be on the verge of a spin all around the pad. Tentatively, I asked Hoeck for a touch more oversteer.

With a quick adjustment of the rear shocks, he had the car ready. The change worked. Suitably tweaked, Hoeck's RX-7 is as perfectly balanced as a car can be. Oversteer arrives smoothly, predictably, and on cue. It's easily controlled in a slide that I was able, in a flagrant but irresistible bit of showmanship for the cameras, to let the tail hang loose, rear tires ablaze, for a full lap of the skidpad. Driven with seriousness, however, it managed 1.035g, the highest reading of the contest, and the highest we have ever recorded without R-compound tires.

In deference to the fact the weather had already pulled the pin on this grenade of an engine, Slalomeister Jacquot used only half as many attempts at the slalom as he did in any other car. The result was still the fastest slalom time of the day, at 72.4 mph.

Finally, on the road course, the triple crown was completed with staggering authority. Thanks in no small part to the stomping and steering skills of Rhys Millen, our ringer driver of the day, the RX-7 ran away with a lap time of 65.1 seconds, an astonishing 2.3 seconds ahead of the second-fastest Escort Cosworth.

It was as convincing a victory as we ever could have hoped for, leaving no doubt that we had, indeed, found the ultimate handling machine. -Dave Coleman