Quick, what comes to mind when you think of the first-generation Mazda RX-7? Rotary relic? Smog-check nightmare? Gas-guzzling, molar-rattling, junkyard-bound rust-bucket?
Well, if you want to be a millionaire, your final answer ought to be D) the cheapest, most competitive, most popular entry-level road-racing machine in the country.
Sixteen years after the last one rolled off the assembly line, the first-generation RX-7 has emerged as an E-ticket ride for road racers on ultra-tight budgets. In recent years, no fewer than three grassroots classes have been developed specifically for first-gen RX-7s. These days, in fact, it's not unusual to find dozens of these dinosaurs pounding around racetracks at club-racing events.
"They're just so economical," said Terry Chen, who races a 1985 RX-7 with a gutted interior and excruciatingly loud straight pipe in the so-called Pro7 class in SCCA and NASA events in Southern California. "And there's nothing like racing against 30 cars just like yours. When you go five-wide into Turn 1, it's exhilarating and intimidating."
Pro7, the newest and fastest-growing of the three RX-7 classes, initially took root in Northern California before spreading like a weed along the West Coast. Like its siblings, Spec RX-7 and IT7, Pro7 is a "spec" class; that is, major components such as wheels, tires, suspension, engine pieces and so on are specified to keep costs down and create a level playing field.
If you're willing and able to build a car yourself, you can put a Pro7 on the track for $6,000. For those with bigger wallets and less mechanical know-now, brand-new, state-of-the-art models sell for $12,000. Alternatively, arrive-and-drive programs are a cost-efficient way to get a competition license and see what all the fuss is about.
"It's a great learning class," said Steve Lindmark, who built his own Pro7 and races it on a shoestring budget. "It gets you the most track time for the least amount of money and it serves as a steppingstone to other classes."
Although some old-timers still remember the days when run-what-you-brung entries were a staple of Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) competition, road racing - even at the amateur level - has never been an inexpensive proposition. But as costs ratchet ever upward, more and more people have been priced out of the SCCA.
This was part of the impetus for the creation of the National Auto Sport Association (NASA), which offers a lower-cost alternative to the SCCA. It also prompted some SCCA stalwarts to take a hard look at their own organization. When they did, said Dave Turner, owner of Dave Turner Motorsports in San Diego: "We noticed that we weren't attracting any youngsters."
During the '70s, Turner had helped write the rules for Improved Touring (IT), which served as SCCA's entry-level "bait" class, hooking newcomers and reeling them into motorsports. But by the early '90s, even IT was becoming prohibitively expensive, so Turner began looking for another way to hold the line on costs. "It's not hard to build a $50,000 race car," he explained. "The problem is building a $5,000 racecar."
Five-thousand dollars doesn't buy much in the racecar universe. Figure $1,000, minimum, for safety equipment. Another $1,000 for wheels and tires. Springs, shocks, brake pads, air filter - ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Under the circumstances, the donor car had to be dirt-cheap. But since there wouldn't be much money left over to trick it out, it had to be pretty good to begin with.
Enter the first-generation RX-7. Built in relatively large numbers from 1979 to 1985, Mazda's rotary rocket was a proven commodity with a proud road-race heritage. The combination of a carbureted engine, rear drive and a beam axle made them simple to work on and fun to drive. As a result, they were immensely popular IT cars - until the arrival of fuel-injected rivals rendered them obsolete.
"They were hopelessly uncompetitive in ITS, so we dropped them to ITA, where they're still really crappy," said Sven Pruett, SCCA's club racing technical manager. "But they make perfect sense for a spec class. First of all, they're plentiful. Second, they're inexpensive. Third, they're as reliable as the day is long."
Turner envisioned a first-gen RX-7 with a lightly tweaked suspension, bigger wheels and tires and a straight pipe after the catalytic converter. Yep, he didn't want to strip off any of the smog equipment. In fact, he insisted the car be street-legal. As he put it, "We wanted something that looked like a racecar, felt like a racecar and sounded like a racecar, but that you could drive to work."
Turner built the first Spec RX-7 in 1993. Thereafter, cars built to the same, well, spec multiplied like bunnies. These days, in some regions, there are so many Spec 7s that they race in their own run-group. Estimates of the total number of Spec 7s across the country range from 300 to 500. Ron Gillespie alone has built 17, even though his company, Phoenix-based Hasport Inc., actually specializes in Hondas.
But despite the undeniable success of the class, some racers found the Spec 7s too close to showroom stock for their taste. Turner himself has had second thoughts about his original concept of a dual-purpose race car. "It's obvious when I see all the cars being trailered to races that they don't have to be street legal," he acknowledged.
In other regions, drivers racing uncompetitive ITA RX-7s wrote new rules for what they billed as IT7, which basically applied the spec concept to an Improved Touring formula. But in the Bay Area, a visionary named Jerry Kunzman had an even better, much, much bolder idea.
In 1989, Kunzman was the driving force behind the creation of NASA. The organization started off with high-speed driving events, most of them featuring street cars. But as NASA moved closer to its goal of honest-to-goodness, let-the-maniacs-loose racing, Kunzman began thinking about a class that would offer top-notch competition at a rock-bottom price.
Like Turner, Kunzman was sold on the benefits of the first-gen RX-7. But he wanted a purpose-built racecar rather than a street-legal hybrid. This left him free to gut the interior and trash the smog equipment, making the cars at once racier to drive and simpler to work on. And while some of the cars looked pretty ratty, they turned out to be awfully attractive to budget-conscious racers.
"It was incredible," Kunzman recalled. "We had five of them at our first race in 1995. At the second race, we had eight to ten, then 12 to 15 at the third. By the summer of '95, we had 24 cars built, and 20 of them went all the way to Ensenada, Mexico, just to go racing."
By 1997, NASA events in Northern California were drawing Pro RX-7 fields as large as 48 cars, and the action was so furious that races were being broadcast on Speedvision. "Back then," said Larry Oka, a longtime Northern California racer who builds and rents Pro7s, "any of the top guys in NASA could have stepped into any car in any class at the National [SCCA] Runoffs and done well. Guys were driving the wheels off those Pro7s."
By the late '90s, the class had plateaued up north. But it got a new lease on life in Southern California when Tom Dragoun happened to come across the Speedvision broadcast of a NASA Pro7 race while channel-surfing in his living room in suburban Los Angeles.
At the time, Dragoun was campaigning a first-gen RX-7 with his son, Scott, in the ITA class of the SCCA's California Sports Car Club region. "We had over $20,000 invested in Scott's car, but we couldn't keep up with the Honda CRXs," he said. "When I saw all those RX-7s racing against each other [on TV], I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen."
Dragoun immediately snagged a copy of the NASA's Pro7 rulebook and wasted no time getting them approved by Cal Club. Scott Dragoun won the region's inaugural Pro7 championship in 1998 in a converted ITA car. But pretty soon, scratch-built cars were the rage in Southern California. So when Craig Young, editor/publisher of the Cal Club newspaper, decided to build a project car for promotional purposes last year, he naturally gravitated to a Pro7. "It's going to be the biggest class we have in 2001," he said.
From the beginning, Tom Dragoun has served as a Pied Piper for Pro7s, tirelessly promoting the class and providing scads of free advice. Since forming 7s Only Racing in 1999, he and Eric Sutton have built more than a dozen Pro7s. This year, the company will rent out six cars while maintaining twelve others on an arrive-and-drive basis.
Although all first-generation cars powered by a 12A rotary are eligible for the class, Dragoun prefers to start with late-model donors because they're already outfitted with options such as disc rear brakes and a limited-slip diff. (Earlier cars can be retrofitted, but it's a hassle.) "You should never spend more than $1,000 for a car," he advised. "If you find a car with a good motor and a decent transmission, that's half the battle."
Dragoun's engines are massaged by another Cal Club racer, rotary specialist Pablo Mobius, who pulls off the smog equipment, rejets the carburetor and blueprints and balances the motor. Mobius says this light massage is enough to bump up the horsepower from the factory rating of 101 bhp to as much as 120 bhp at the rear wheels. Better still, 12As are virtually bulletproof.
The suspension is reworked with Eibach springs, Tokico shocks, a Ground Control front anti-roll bar and a coil-over kit and camber plates from Design Products. With some tuning, it's possible to dial out much of the rear-end binding that makes the handling of stock RX-7s so treacherous.
The interior is gutted down to the dashboard pad. Although bolt-in rollcages are legal, Dragoun welds his cages with so-called NASCAR bars that provide side-impact protection. Auto Meter gauges are mounted on angled metal plates facing the driver, and Dragoun generally specs out his cars with a MOMO suede steering wheel and Cobra Kevlar seats.
Largely because NASA was able to cut a deal with Toyo for a cheap spec tire back when the class was formed, Pro7s run on wheels of stock weight and dimension - 28 lbs (with tires) and 13x5.5 inches. The spec tire is a Toyo RA1 185/60R-13. The good news is that the rubber wears evenly, slowly and predictably down to the cord. The bad news is that the contact patch is too small to provide much grip.
"Pro7s are definitely a handful to drive," said Robert Davis, who's won Cal Club's last two Pro7 championship in cars he built from $100 junkers. "They're very unforgiving at the limit. You've almost got to drive them like a dirt car. If you let off the throttle in the middle of a corner, the tail will come around on you."
Because the cars are under-tired, they're difficult for novices to drive quickly. Fortunately, rookies who'd like to get their feet wet without getting in over their head building or buying a car can rent Pro7s for NASA and SCCA schools and race weekends. In Southern California, call Dragoun at (661) 322-2211. In Northern California, try Oka at (925) 862-0172.
Spec 7s are a user-friendly alternative to Pro7s. Because they're still burdened with smog equipment, they're not quite as powerful as the Pro7s, but because they run 205-series Kumhos on 7-inch wheels, they carry more speed through the corners. On balance, Pro7s are a bit quicker, while Spec 7s are easier to drive. In Arizona, Gillespie [(602) 437-2404] is your best source for rentals. In other areas, check with your local SCCA or NASA region.
No matter what particular class of car you choose, if you've got any interest in road racing, you ought to get your butt in a spec RX-7 as soon as possible. "At my first test session, I ran three tanks of gas through the car," said Corey Clough, who built his own car and enjoyed the experience so much that he went to work for Dragoun. "This is grassroots racing, and it's really, really fun."
The Next Big Thing The original Mazda Miata brought the two-seat sports car to the masses. The Spec Miata may perform the same trick for club racing.
Created with Mazda's official blessing and support, the new nationwide class brings the Spec RX-7 concept of affordable, competitive racing to the oh-so-lovable Miata.
"I think it's going to be huge - much bigger than the RX-7 class," said Larry Oka, who's already renting several Spec Miatas. "Even though the initial buy-in is higher, Spec Miatas are much nicer cars - newer and made with better components. They're not just clapped-out cars that somebody threw away."
The idea of a spec Miata built to IT-style rules was the brainstorm of Shannon McMasters of Import Motorsports in suburban Dallas, who saw it as a step beyond the Spec RX-7s he was already racing. In 1998, he developed a package with David del Genio of Driven Performance in Acworth, NH, and got the approval of Mazda Competition Parts.
All 1990 to 1997 Miatas are eligible, though 1994-and-after models with the larger 1.8-liter engine are penalized with restrictors and extra weight. A hardtop is required, and Toyo RA1s mounted on 15 x 7-inch wheels are the spec tires. A suspension package featuring Bilstein shocks, Eibach coil-overs and Eibach anti-roll bars is sold by Mazda Competition Parts as a kit priced at $1,100.
The result is a wonderfully balanced car that makes up for modest acceleration with excellent stopping power and impeccable road manners. "They handle and race a lot like Spec Racer Fords," said McMasters, who's already built 10 and does a lively rental business. "They're momentum cars. And they're extremely durable."
Another powerful selling point of the class is that the rules governing it are the same across the country. This is a stark and welcome contrast to the tangle of regulations governing Spec RX-7s, which differ region by region.
Mazda Comp manager Steve Sanders said 45 people had signed up for the factory program by the beginning of 2001. McMasters expects at least 200 Spec Miatas to be racing by the end of the season and sees no upper limit in sight.
"The spec RX-7s caught us by surprise," anders admitted. "But this could be even bigger. I've never seen a class grow this fast."