For anyone like myself – that is, a car fan who grew up in the 1990s and watched Japan’s sports cars disappear from the American market in one sudden swoop, news that Japan’s once mighty auto industry is being “hollowed out” might come as a shock. The cars that defined my youth – the RX-7s, Supras even the VTEC Honda compacts, are a distant memory. Most of what Japan offers on our shores are aimed at the mainstream, while at home, kei-cars and hybrids dominate the market.

A lot of the criticism leveled at Japan is that their focus on the mainstream market and alternative powertrains is what sparked their auto industry’s current malaise. But this is a superficial and fallacious assumption that supposes that the glut of superb Japanese cars in the 1990s is a baseline for our expectations of what a Japanese auto maker should be building and selling. In fact, it is an aberration that will never occur again.

Japan, early 1990s. It is a boom unlike even the MBS-fueled manic episode that tinted the last days of my adolescence. Everything is expensive, but who cares, because everyone is rich! Contrary to what Detroit tells you, the reason nobody in Japan buys foreign cars is because of conformity. There is a famous phrase in Japanese business culture; “the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down”. You, the salaryman with cash to burn, will support the home team. You will buy one of these fabulous cars created by our all-conquering auto industry, and you will replace it every few years due to the shakken inspection system and because it is uncouth to drive an old, used car.

If 1950s American cars are a reflection of the optimism and prosperity of that era, then let’s look was offered by a country that saw its stock market plunge by trillions of dollars. Gullwinged-Mazda kei cars. Honda Legends with four-figure gyroscopic navigation systems. 1.6L V6s engines in D-Segment Mitsubishis. Why? Because they could. It was pure, unabashed hubris that led auto makers to field umpteen variations of the same mid-size car or open different sales channels for each model, like the Honda Accord, which begot the Honda Vigor, Inspire, Ascot, Innova, Rafaga, Saber and Torneo. All of them were only slightly different from one another but they were sold across three separate sales channels dubbed Primo, Clio and Verno. It was a scenario that made General Motors pre-bankruptcy sales strategy look lean by comparison.

The competitive nature of the Japanese auto industry and the “gentlemens agreement” limiting cars to 276 horsepower meant that an arms race of technology was being waged. R&D budgets were limitless. No technology was too complex or too expensive to implement on any given product. Twin turbo rotary engines at Mazda, four-wheel steering and all-wheel drive at Nissan, active aerodynamics at Mitsubishi, and of course, the all-aluminum, F1-inspired NSX at Honda. Even at the lower end, there were countless high-performance variants of the lowliest econoboxes: Type-Rs and Spec-Rs and Cyborg Rs and 9000 RPM, 1600cc VZ-Rs and BZ-R’s (not to be confused with our current, boxer-blighted BRZs) which were Corollas with 5 valves per cylinder and individual throttle bodies. That was technology that Ferrari never even saw until long after the BZ-R was introduced.

It was utter insanity, but Japan was in a unique position to support these offerings. Aside from its economic growth, its demographic picture meant that those born just after WWII, when birth rates were still high, were hitting their earnings peak. And since everyone was flush with money, they could afford to buy these cars.

When the bottom fell out of the economy, the cars mentioned above were already too far along in the development cycle to be canceled. The OEMs had no choice but to release them after sinking so much money into their development. And while the higher end product was pulled from our market, they soldiered on in Japan. With no foreign competition, there wasn’t much to lose. Everything was so advanced and over-engineered that they still felt – and in some cases, even looked – fresh and modern despite being a decade old.

Now fast forward to 2013. Nearly a quarter of the population is over 65, and Japan’s population growth is negative. The bulk of consumers are likely buying their last car, and young people are famously not interested in the automobile.  Now that there is no domestic consumer base, the product development ethos has irrevocably changed. What were once solutions to local problems and tastes must now be targeted at a global audience, with all of the peculiarities and regulatory demands and business cases that come with it.

Instead of the three-rotor Mazda Cosmo or the gorgeous Nissan Silvia, we have the Toyota 86, a car that was apparently so risky that a corporate behemoth like Toyota had to partner with a relative bit player like Subaru just to bring it to production. The one upshot in the economics of the current economics of the auto industry is that to maximize the ROI for this car, there will inevitably be more variants. Definitely a convertible. Maybe a sedan. Just maybe, if we’re lucky, a shooting brake.

It is fashionable nowadays in the automotive press to stake out a position that brands oneself as the vanguard of automotive enthusiasm, defender of all that has “soul” and “character”, while admonishing the manufacturers for offering bland pablum instead of the exciting enthusiast machines that once existed. Ultimately these are just the ignorant ramblings of those who are unable or unwilling to understand the external forces that shape cars; macroeconomics, government regulations, demographics, geography, trade policies.  The auto industry is not a charity that produces widgets for driving enthusiasts. It is a business like anything else, and its output is directly related to the input.

Meanwhile, you can go to the dealer and buy an MX-5 that has barely risen in price, when taking inflation into account, since being introduced nearly 25 years ago. You can still buy an honest-to-god Made In Japan European-market Accord, or a sublime rally-derived Mitsubishi. You can finally buy a new Z car or a GT-R, two products we clamored for in the late 1990s. Now they’re here, along with the WRX , a product that we also cried out for not too long ago. Are things really that dire? Or are we so dissatisfied with our present that the only escape is to romanticize an era that should have never been?

Deciding what to do with a 662 hp muscle car was hard enough. Deciding what to do with the last pristine nearly new RX-7 in the country is even harder — because you can’t do anything with it, really. You certainly can’t street park it. I left it in an open lot the first night, only to discover that someone had put out their cigarette on the decklid. That was it. I ended up paying prices that would make a Manhattanite blush just so I could leave it in a covered multi-story garage visible from the bedroom window of my condo. Night after night I would stare at the slippery yellow shape under the glow of the cheap halogen lights, like a father staring at his premature baby in the neo-natal unit, checking and re-checking despite the near zero probability of anything bad actually happening.

The text message is from my brother, who was born in November, 1992. The same month and year that this RX-7 was delivered to Mazda Canada. It’s a weekday night and I’d have to drive 125 miles to get there, on an empty, mostly straight highway.  But here’s a chance for us to spend some time together, in a car as old as he is, without parents or peers around. It doesn’t happen as often as it should. I throw a change of clothes and my laptop into a bag, then make a beeline for the garage.

My old Miata, shod with slim tires and shaped like a bullet at both ends, lent itself well to being wheeled around parking garages. Not so with the RX-7. The air dam has the same profile and effective clearance as a bulldozer’s blade, and the 255-width front tires mean lots of clenched jaws and bicep work. Exiting the angled ramp of the garage requires popping the door and angling half your body outside the car, Valentino Rossi-style, to make sure you’re not scraping the front end on any curbs.

All of those picayune concerns evaporate once you’re out on the road. The width is still there, but the low hood and near 360 degree glass canopy offers amazing visibility when trying to change lines or dart in and out of traffic. The clutch takeup is beefier than that of the Miata, but has the same intuitive takeup point. Once I’ve escaped the urban hell of rush hour gridlock, the empty highway ramp beckons, and I can finally see what all the fuss is about the rotary engine.

Clarkson likened the Audi R8′s performance to smearing honey inside Keira Knightley, another example of his frequently bestowed, but rarely deserved,  superlatives. In the RX-7′s case, the 13B twin-rotor engine really is so smooth, so thrilling and so unlike anything else today that it could accurately be compared to twisting the adjustment knob on Bertel’s favorite adult novelty while it’s inside two of your favorite female celebrities at once. It really is that satisfying.

There is no real perceptible noise or furious forward thrust like that found in a Boss 302 Mustang  - in fact, it’s about as fast as a brand new V6 Mustang. Then again a protein bar and a steak can have similar nutritional value. The cable throttle itself is a welcome change from the lifeless servo units in every other car today, and every millimeter of travel translates into a bit of forward thrust that is undeniable and tangible. From 0-4500 rpm there’s a decent shove forward that feels perfectly adequate itself. Once the second, larger turbo comes in, however, there’s a hellfire blast of power, more Tesla than Mazda, and the scenery starts to move very quickly. The 7000 RPM upshift is punctuated with a crisp wastegate ppsshhhtttt and before you know it, you’re at the point of “I really didn’t know how fast I was going, officer”. The RX-7′s effortless ability to warp time and space belies the 255-horsepower rating until you consider that the car weighs 2800 lbs.

And yet before I can non-ironically give this old Mazda a non-ironical “greatest car in the worrrrrld” award, I’m harshly interrupted by its glaring flaws. The seats were apparently designed by the same people who ran the Hanoi Hilton and by mile 75, my lower back felt like it had an awl punched through it, repeatedly. The Bose Acoustic “WaveGuide” stereo also seemed to work on its own schedule; sometimes there would be radio reception, sometimes it would play very well out of one side of the car.

At mile 110, there is a bang and a clunk as the car begins to sag and thump on the driver’s side. Pulling over on the busy 401 freeway isn’t the life-threatening nightmare it usually is, on account of the light traffic at 10 P.M., and there is a Highway Patrolman situated on the shoulder a mere 25 yards behind me. The friendly constable shines a flashlight on the wheel, and it’s apparent that I suffered a full blowout. The sidewall is still attached to the rim, but the rest of the carcass hangs limply off the rim like a badly broken limb. “Holy shit bud,” he says with an almost too stereotypical Canadian accent, “I don’t know how you didn’t end up in the rhubarb.” We are not in Toronto anymore.

The next day, after all impediments are removed, the drive back is less eventful. Pouring rain gives way to clear skies. My brother and I pig out on fast food, pour nearly $100 of premium gas in the tank, and stop to get parts for a beer funnel. We curse the poor seats and crappy stereo as he takes in what a car from his birth year was like. He’s incredulous that the RX-7 cost $47,000 Canadian dollars in 1993, roughly $100,000 in today’s money. “You’ve got to be kidding me. With this interior? This is so crappy. I get it on the Miata, but one hundred grand?” The quirks of the car are totally foreign to him too. “I’ve never been in a car that needs to be warmed up and cooled down. Or one where the exhaust gas can get too hot [there's a warning light for that on the center console].”

As he speaks, I’m listening to his argument while examining his technique behind the wheel. For someone who doesn’t live and breathe cars, he drives well. Hands at 9 and 3, steady with his movements, eyes looking well ahead. His friends have all grown up ensconced in marshmallow-soft luxury crossovers loaded with every active safety feature known to man, but he’s been in a few real cars and understands that “sporting” doesn’t just mean a trim level on the BMW X5.  Somewhere in the four years that separates us, however, things changed irrevocably and the appeal of an elemental, eccentric sports car faded. At least the driving skills needed to enjoy one have been imprinted on him, should those cars ever return. Fortunately, driving adventures with your loved ones never require context.

Putting an end to the vicious cycle of rumors and conjecture, Mazda’s sports car chief revealed that they will bring back the RX-7 in 2017, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Cosmo sports car.

Nobohiru Yamamoto, who is now head of the MX-5 program, told Australia’s The Motor Report that the RX-7 will use a stretched version of the Miata platform, and weigh roughly as much as the 2775 lb Toyota 86. Japanese market versions will have a small rear seat, while North American versions will be two-seaters.

Power will come from the new 16X rotary engine, a naturally aspirated unit capable of nearly 300 horsepower. Yamamoto said that a large single turbo caused too much lag, and a sequential twin-turbo setup like the previous RX-7 was “not ideal”. But Yamamoto didn’t rule out a turbo either for future production. But even in naturally aspirated form, the power to weight ratio should exceed the last RX-7 sold in North America.

Also absent from the RX-7 will be any kind of KERS or hybrid system. Mazda currently doesn’t have any sort of technology in that space, and according to Yamamoto “”…a pure sports ca…must be internal combustion.” Lightweight aluminum body panels and special catalysts will help the car meet tough emissions and fuel economy standards.

Unfortunately, all that will come at a price. The RX-7 will apparently be more expensive than something like a Nissan 370Z or a Toyota 86. All that engineering comes at a price, and the RX-7 will be positioned to reflect that.