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Posted
Feb 24 2010, 02:44 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 30 comment(s)
For the past seven days, I've been tooling around the Los Angeles area in a 2010 Mazda RX-8 R3. Even seven years after it was introduced, the RX-8 is still one of the most unique cars on the road, and despite some drawbacks, it offers a driving experience to match....
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Posted
Jan 26 2010, 12:04 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 24 comment(s)
Has it already been a full year since we did Mazda month? Indeed it has. No matter what month it is, I think we can all agree there's never a bad time for some rotary action, and here we have plenty of that - thanks to Roo Wills from New Zealand.
Roo headed out to the New Zealand Rotary Summer (yes, summer) Drags earlier this month and sent us some photos of his findings....
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Posted
Nov 18 2009, 03:12 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 37 comment(s)
Back in January when we did Mazda month, we ran a spotlight on this IMSA-styled SA22C RX7 out of Japan. At the time the car was done in semi-gloss black, but it's since been repainted in a glossy red. The guys from the 22C Works website sent us some photos of the remade car, and we knew for sure you guys would want to see them....
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Posted
Nov 07 2009, 01:22 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 25 comment(s)
When I met Darren for his headshots for the DMac retrospective , he had only just put the finishing touches to the latest incarnation of the MCNSport AE86. It's been several months since I last saw the car tucked away at the MCNSport shop; before that it was at an AE86 trackday at Mondello Park. I'd heard a few rumours circulating around for a while that the guys were planning all sorts of different engine conversions for the lightweight Trueno. 20V's and Formula Atlantic 4AGE's were...
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Posted
Oct 20 2009, 11:24 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 22 comment(s)
A couple weeks ago when I was at the Japanese Classic Car Show in Irvine, parked alongside the classic RX7's in Mazda's display I spotted this wild-looking MX-6. The normal MX-6 was a front wheel drive coupe that shared a platform with the Ford Probe, but the IMSA GTU race version was a just a bit different....
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Posted
Oct 02 2009, 12:45 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 20 comment(s)
Well, it's October already. Tomorrow I'll be kicking off the month with a trip down to Orange County for the fifth annual Japanese Classic Car Show - something I've been looking forward to for a while. Before that though, I need to finish up my coverage from last weekend's big event in Orange County, Sevenstock. I posted a lot of sexy RX7's and RX8's in my first Sevenstock post, so this time I'm going to give some love to the more unique cars (and trucks) found at Sevenstock 12....
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Posted
Sep 28 2009, 01:15 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 21 comment(s)
Now that I'm getting settled at my new place in Torrance, I'm finally in position to take in everything that SoCal's car culture has to offer. What used to require a full day's road trip is now just a short freeway hop away - unless there happens to be a traffic jam. Luckily traffic was light on Saturday when I headed down the 405 freeway to the Mazda USA headquarters in Irvine for Sevenstock 12 - one of the biggest rotary gatherings in the world. It may be BMW month on Speedhunters, but there's never a bad time to enjoy rotaries of both the vintage and modern variety....
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Posted
Sep 26 2009, 10:02 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 11 comment(s)
While a good part of the Speedhunters team was getting soaked at Road Atlanta this weekend, I was here in sunny Southern California for Sevenstock 12 at the Mazda HQ in Irvine. This was my first time at this event, and it was quite an experience walking around this mecca of the Wankel engine.
Stay tuned for a nice helping of rotary goodness from SoCal!
-Mike Garrett...
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Posted
Aug 13 2009, 11:01 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 10 comment(s)
As you've seen in the Speedhunters '09 Speed Week coverage, there's an incredible variety of machines that come out to Bonneville to run on the hallowed salt. From streamliners to motorcycles to pickup trucks, if it has wheels chances are you'll find it out there. Japanese tuners have long had an addiction to the salt, with cars like the JUN Z and Dandy RX7 making appearances over the years. However, some of the most famous Japanese cars to run at Bonneville weren't tuned in Japan, but right here in the USA by the guys at Racing Beat. As part of Speed month, we thought a quick look at these historic salt-going rotaries was in order....
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Posted
Jul 07 2009, 11:30 PM
by
Dino Dalle Carbonare
with 34 comment(s)
July 7th is a rather special day in Japan, if you are into rotaries that is. Every year on this day RX-7 owners flock to the Daikoku Parking Area under the Yokohama Bay Bridge for what has to be one of the biggest car gatherings of the year. Like most meetings of this nature it is all organized and coordinated online via various local clubs scattered around the country. As I arrived just after 6 pm there was already a pretty good number of cars slowly taking over the top part of the massive car park...
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Posted
Jun 11 2009, 09:15 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 23 comment(s)
Earlier this week Mad Mike Whiddett debuted his new RX8 drift car in New Zealand, letting our buddies at NZPC get first dibs on shooting this beast. The outside of the new car looks very similar to his RX7, with a wide BN Sports kit and of course the Red Bull graphics. In proper Mad Mike fashion, the wheels are Work Equips that are nearly as wide as they are tall. Under the hood is a three-rotor 20B fed by an HKS T51R turbine - something a bit different from the 4-rotor NA mill in the FD.
At the moment the Madbul FD is being shipped to Japan, so the RX8 will become Mad Mike's primary vehicle back home in NZ. We'll be keeping an eye out to see how Mike and the new car do in the NZ Drift series this year.
Thanks again to the NZPC and NZ Drift Series crew for the scoop.
-Mike Garrett
...
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Posted
May 19 2009, 01:05 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 9 comment(s)
Earlier this month when I was at the Bug-In event at Autoclub Speedway, I found myself spending a lot of time wandering through the staging lanes looking over all the cars that came out to for the drags. As you saw during my Bug-In event coverage, there was a wide variety of VW's there, ranging from lightly modified daily drivers to VW-powered rail dragsters.
With that said, there was one car I saw that really threw me off. ...
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Posted
May 08 2009, 01:43 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 24 comment(s)
One thing I love about our little Speedhunters project is how so many of you are getting in touch with us, to showcase your local car scenes. Jason Joaquin from Barbados has recently been sending us emails about a Pan-Caribbean series called the CMRC or Caribbean Motor Racing Championship. It consists of three rounds: the Jamaica meet is on May 24th, this is followed by round two in Barbados in August and finally the championship concludes in Guyana in November. There are some pretty wild cars running...
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Posted
Apr 06 2009, 05:08 PM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 6 comment(s)
I'll pick up where we left off in the first post , where we were about to embark on an 1,100 mile roundtrip to the UK to compete at the first round of the 2009 JDM Allstars series. We left Ireland on a late sailing and arrived into the UK at around 1a.m. We headed through the night to south west England and to Devon, the home of rotary specialists Dragon Performance. We arrived at around 4a.m. and tried to get an hour or so sleep in the van but instead ended up watching WRC videos on Ffrenchie's...
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Posted
Mar 11 2009, 03:40 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 23 comment(s)
Since I have quite a few friends that own Mazda RX7s and RX3s, I've seen firsthand how fun they can be, and have always had a certain respect for rotary powered vehicles. I even owned a 13B powered FC3S RX7 about ten years ago, so I am definitely a plan of the RX platform. About a week ago, I was given the opportunity to test drive the 2009 Mazda RX8 R3, the newest evolution of the RX8 platform. The most obvious changes that the R3 version offers over the normal RX8s begin with the exterior....
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Posted
Jan 29 2009, 03:49 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 17 comment(s)
As we creep towards the end of Mazda month, I still have a couple of special features left to do. You have already seen some of the privately owned RX7 track cars in Japan earlier this month, but now it's time to look at the "top guns" of this. These are cars the cars that share more in common with works-backed racing machines than they do normal tuner cars. At the track, you'll see them with full pit crews, stacks of extra tires, air jacks, and other things you'd see at places like Le Mans, or Daytona. There are many RX7's out there capable of lapping Tsukuba Circuit in well under a minute, but there are three big ones that come mind. The Screen FD, the Pan Speed FD, and the most recent addition, the Revolution TA-2 FD....
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Posted
Jan 27 2009, 01:58 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 17 comment(s)
Does anybody remember this car build by Gluck Tuning Garage? Funny thing is I was just listening to a mix tape made by Asher Roth when a good friend of mine called me up and said he just bought a Z3. Because it is Mazda month I immediately remembered this rotary powered Z3 and I went looking for a picture of the car. I know it's not the best picture but you can clearly see the 13B rotary engine. Gluck went all out on this car and fabricated a custom bodykit with Honda Odyssey headlights. The...
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Posted
Jan 26 2009, 04:50 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 25 comment(s)
Ok this post is going to disturb the purists..... If you are a person for whom the notion of an engine swap from a different auto manufacturer is the stuff of nightmares then please look away now.... This is an argument which has gone on for decades, even into the early hot rod years. For some people the notion of a Chevy engine in a Ford Hot Rod is a show of poor taste. ...Same goes for the wave of Honda S2000 engines which are finding their way into AE86s... Horrid! Sacriledge! Sin!..... V8 into...
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Posted
Jan 18 2009, 07:24 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 22 comment(s)
I don't really consider myself to be a "purist" when it comes to cars, but I can see how hardcore Mazda enthusiasts would have a tough time with all the people swapping V8's and other piston engines into RX7's these days. Occasionally though, you'll find someone going against the current and dropping a rotary into a "traditional" platform. This SXE10 Toyota Altezza is one of them. It's being built by Martin Ffrench for use in the UK-based JDM All Stars drift series, and from what we hear, it's shaping up to be one of the coolest drift cars in Europe. Besides the RE powerplant, a full carbon kevlar aero kit is in the works for the exterior. Martin obviously isn't a purist because he also has a sister-car to this that's powered by a Nissan SR20DET. We'll be sure to update once the car is finished. Thanks to Paddy McGrath for the tip and for the photo....
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Posted
Jan 06 2009, 09:25 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 3 comment(s)
I was digging through my hard drive looking for photos of classic Mazdas and one of my finds was this shot right here. I took this picture of a Mazda Familia Rotary Coupe at the JCCA meet at Tsukuba Circuit last summer. The Familia Rotary Coupe was used during Mazda's early racing days and saw action in a number of late '60s and early '70s touring car events including the Spa 24 Hours. Mazda's experience racing these cars would of course lead to bigger ventures like the famous 787's at LeMans. It was also with cars like this that people like Isami Amemiya began to hone their rotary tuning skills on the streets of Japan. ...
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