Junkyard Find: 1979 Mazda RX-7

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

First-gen RX-7 s aren’t uncommon in wrecking yards in the western part of the country, as demonstrated by this ’79, this ’80 with incredibly of-its-time custom paint, and this fairly solid ’85. In fact, I don’t bother to photograph most of the examples I see. Today’s ’79, with its brown-and-beige tape stripes, seemed worthy of inclusion in the Junkyard Find series, though.

It’s fairly complete, the body is straight, and there’s no rust.

It’s difficult to get these cars through the California emissions test, though, even with the not-so-stringent requirements for the 1979 model year.

Looks like the dash and the door panels have been pulled.

Poor doomed RX-7.


The car you’ve been waiting for is waiting for you!





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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  • Japanese Buick Japanese Buick on Apr 26, 2014

    My wife was driving an 83 (?) GSL-SE when we met. It was a great car and held up well when it was her daily driver. When her commute changed and it was relegated to fun and weekend duty, it fell apart. Apex seals and flooding became a big problem. It needed work about every 700 miles and her mechanic said it has to be driven regularly. Final straw was when we moved to the country and its sporty ride became punishing on washboard dirt roads. We sold it with about 70k mikes and used the money to buy a generator (it was 1999). So long story short I can definitely see why it ended up junked.

    • Redshift Redshift on Apr 26, 2014

      An NA rotory driven regularly and slightly hard will last forever. Neglect and "gentle" will see them have a lot more problems. And the GSL-SE was 84 and 85 in North America.

  • Jim brewer Jim brewer on Apr 26, 2014

    15 years at 5K per year? Doesn't sound so bad to me. I haven't tried one, but If I were in the market, I'd definitely give their products a test drive. There's a Mazda Millenia in our parking lot. Average to good condition for its age. No show car. Just a really handsome practical and comfortable looking car.

    • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Apr 29, 2014

      You get into trouble with the Millenia unless you get one of the very early ones, which are getting pretty rare and old these days. The Millenia is on Steve Lang's used cars to avoid list.

  • 28-Cars-Later WSJ blurb in Think or Swim:Workers at Volkswagen's Tennessee factory voted to join the United Auto Workers, marking a historic win for the 89- year-old union that is seeking to expand where it has struggled before, with foreign-owned factories in the South.The vote is a breakthrough for the UAW, whose membership has shrunk by about three-quarters since the 1970s, to less than 400,000 workers last year.UAW leaders have hitched their growth ambitions to organizing nonunion auto factories, many of which are in southern states where the Detroit-based labor group has failed several times and antiunion sentiment abounds."People are ready for change," said Kelcey Smith, 48, who has worked in the VW plant's paint shop for about a year, after leaving his job at an Amazon.com warehouse in town. "We look forward to making history and bringing change throughout the entire South."   ...Start the clock on a Chattanooga shutdown.
  • 1995 SC Didn't Chrysler actually offer something with a rearward facing seat and a desk with a typewriter back in the 60s?
  • The Oracle Happy Trails Tadge
  • Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Union fees and corruption. What can go wrong?
  • Lou_BC How about one of those 2 foot wide horizontal speedometers out of the late 60's Ford Galaxie?
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