5 Used Mazda Rotary Classics For Every Budget

We love a good rotary here. There’s quite literally nothing like the sound of a well-tuned Wankel even at idle, let alone full chat. Watching YouTube footage of rotary-engined racers in their prime always fills us with the sort of lust for old Mazdas that ends up filling our browser histories with probably a few too many searches for how much you can sell organs for.

Off the back of Mazda’s 50th anniversary Wankel celebrations, we’ve put together a list of five rotary classics that you can buy right now. Unless any of them sell while we’re writing this, that is, which would be annoying. From the Cosmo to the RX-8, there’s a piece of rotary glory out there to suit (almost) every budget.

Cosmo

Let’s start with the daddy; the original and arguably the most interesting. Launched in 1967 with the first production Mazda Wankel engine, the name Cosmo was chosen to ride the coat tails of the space race; to seem futuristic and ahead of its time. What wasn’t ahead of its time was the production speed; the Cosmo was built by hand at a rate of just one per day. Up to 130bhp was yours from a 982cc rotary in Series II cars; 110bhp was your maximum for the first generation.

The Cosmo name continued all the way until 1996 in a series of underwhelming models, some of which used rotary power, but it never achieved greater things than in its first incarnation. Nowadays you’ll have pay a tidy sum if you want one. Most are listed without a price for obvious reasons, but we found this lovely orange 33,700-miler for sale at Fast Classics in Surrey, for a cool £99,995. It looks to be in fantastic condition.

RX-7 (FC)

Finding cheap RX-7s isn’t easy. Your best chance is with the relatively unloved FC generation, which perhaps fell wider of the mark than the FB and FD cars. Made until 1992, the FC was nonetheless a fast car for its time. Non-turbo cars produced 148-158bhp from their 13B rotaries, while blown versions ranged from 182bhp to 212bhp.

Mazda also made a convertible, and it’s a red one of those that we’ve found for a reasonable-sounding £3500. One of the very last FCs to be made, this one is likely to have been imported from Japan at some stage in its life. Having rolled just 77,000 miles it could realistically have lived an easy life, but you’d need to be wary of the lack of information in the advert and incomplete service history. Tempting, nonetheless. Imagine that engine singing on a summer’s day with the roof down…

REPU

Yep, it’s a pickup. Possibly the rarest of all the Mazda rotaries is the REPU, which stood, rather predictably, for rotary-engined pickup. Derived from the second-generation B-Series truck and sold only in North America, around 15,000 were built but the vast majority have long since been scrapped. Collectors and enthusiasts hang onto the few that are left. Poor sales cut its jugular after just a couple of years, and given rotary’s reputation for low torque at accessible engine speeds, we can imagine why it didn’t catch on.

After a short search we found this one, which at the time of writing was for sale in Orange County, California. It looks beautiful and seems to have been maintained fastidiously, also being garaged for the majority of the time, according to the seller. Reassuringly, the brake lines, pads and cylinders were all refreshed in 2015. A cabin heater has been installed, although we Brits don’t know why they need heaters in California, and the engine’s ignition system was upgraded to RX-7 spec when it was rebuilt at 100,000 miles. It’s now sitting on 146,000 miles, and the asking price is a modest $10,000 (£7770).

RX-7 (FD)

Of course, you always knew that an FD RX-7 would make this list. The very definition of tuner scene car porn, the FD was immortalised in The Fast & The Furious but had already sunk its claws into car guys and girls all over the world. It still looks perfect today; a masterpiece of 1990s Japanese sports car design just like the later Honda S2000.

This one is a bit special among the plentiful FDs you can see in the classifieds today. A Japanese-market car, it’s right-hand drive and is completely, totally standard. Commence heavy breathing. It’s also pristine, say the sellers in Hong Kong, to where the car was exported a couple of years ago. To ice the cake, this outrageously lovely example has covered just 11,000 miles from new. The odometer reads 18,000km, according to the advert. As such this is heartbreakingly expensive, at €53,000 (£46,400), but we reckon that can only go up. Want an investment? Buy this car. Or spend a lot less on one you can use guilt-free.

RX-8

From the most expensive RX on this list we slide to the cheapest. The RX-8 was a slow-burner; a car from which die-hard RX-7 fans were expecting more. More power, more speed and more drama, which the RX-8 didn’t really provide in high-enough doses. But, as the model aged, more people warmed to its high-revving charms, sweet handling balance and quirky 2+2-door layout, despite common and serious problems caused when owners failed to keep the oil tank topped up.

These days just £1690 buys you one like this, for sale with a trader with just two owners from new; a very good sign. It’s the more powerful 228bhp version, i.e. the one you want, and it’s only covered 57,000 miles in its 10-year life. The wheels aren’t standard, though, and some of you may already have clocked that this mileage represents the start of the window when the next owner should be looking to have the engine checked and rebuilt if necessary. Still, that’s a lot of revs, noise and horsepower per pound if it turns out to be a good one…