It may be hard to imagine now, as Toyota endures its current safety recall nightmare and Honda loses focus, but as little as 15 years ago, the Japanese auto manufacturers built not just solid, reliable cars, but exciting, soul-stirring sports cars. From 1985 to 2000, the list of Japanese sports cars offered in America - both legendary and forgotten - was massive:
Acura Integra Type R, Acura NSX, Honda CRX, Honda Civic del sol, Honda Prelude, Honda S2000, Isuzu Impulse, Lexus SC300/400, Mazda MX-3, Mazda MX-5 Miata, Mazda MX-6, Mazda RX-7, Mitsubishi Starion, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Mitsubishi 3000GT, Nissan 240SX, Nissan 300ZX, Subaru XT, Subaru SVX, Toyota MR2, Toyota Celica, and Toyota Supra.
Many of them had pop-up headlights, high-strung turbocharged engines, all-wheel-drive powertrains, and even 4-wheel steering setups. Back in the day, the odds were that if it was Japanese and had 2 doors, it was a technological and performance tour-de-force. They made the traditional American and European sports cars of the day look positively dowdy, pudgy, and agricultural by comparison.
By the year 2000, though, most of them were either gone or on their way out as their manufacturers stopped running the performance race, but instead raced to the middle to offer buyers bland sedans by the hundreds of thousands. Today, only 6 of the above sports car legends survive in any form. This week's Car of the Week celebrates the prettiest, yet among the shortest-lived (in America, anyway) of them all - the 1993-95 Mazda RX-7.
Of all the major Japanese auto manufacturers, Mazda has always gone their own way. Ever since their entrance into the American market in 1970, the company has positioned itself as a maker of vehicles that had a few things in common with each other: responsiveness, attainable performance, and driving enjoyment best described by their own marketing department as "zoom-zoom".
