Junkyard Find: 1980 Mazda RX-7, With Incredibly 80s Custom Paint

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

First-generation RX-7s aren’t uncommon Junkyard Finds, even though the youngest ones are 27 years old now. However, not many full-on early-to-mid-80s custom paint jobs show up at junkyards these days. Here’s one I found in Denver last week.

Purple, pink, and gold with pinstripes!

With a 5-digit odometer, there’s no way of knowing how many miles this car traveled during its 32 years on the planet. 88,000? 188,000? 288,000? It seems pretty clean, given its current parking space, so the first figure could be the right one.

It’s possible that this wild paint job got sprayed on while Jimmy Carter was still in the White House, or perhaps it was applied five years ago. So many mysteries with a car like this!


28 MPG in an early RX-7? Ah, for the days when highway fuel economy was calculated at 42 MPH… down a steep grade… drafting behind a line of tractor-trailers.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Ryoku75 Ryoku75 on Nov 21, 2012

    These early RX-7s do look nice, but I never really cared for rotary engines myself, at least when used in cars. They get gas mileage like a big 4 cylinder or a V6 (but without the torque), they're easy to rev and yet apparently they're not built for that, and I for one don't have the time nor patience to oil an engine every 1000 miles. They're seen as unreliable simply because the RX-7 wasn't built for the common man, but the thing is they're sports car, they're built to have fun in and throw out once something breaks. And no I'm not some lazy non-car buff, I maintain my own car as required by the owners manual. I just have my patience with with a cars "quirks".

  • JMII JMII on Nov 21, 2012

    The kid who lives next door to me would be all over this. He got a similar one in yellow with a bunch of work done to it: full areo kit, roll cage, huge turbo, rims, stereo, etc. His father has a 10 second Lexus with monster turbos. They aren't messing around either, they got a fully enclosed trailer in which they tow some other cars. Here a video of the Lexus in action at the strip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY85zjXdeYY

  • 1995 SC At least you can still get one. There isn't much for Ford folks to be happy about nowadays, but the existence of the Mustang and the fact that the lessons from back in the 90s when Ford tried to kill it and replace it with the then flavor of the day seem to have been learned (the only lessons they seem to remember) are a win not only for Ford folks but for car people in general. One day my Super Coupe will pop its headgaskets (I know it will...I read it on the Internet). I hope I will still be physically up to dropping the supercharged Terminator Cobra motor into it. in all seriousness, The Mustang is a.win for car guys.
  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
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