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One of the most sought-after JDM cars ever made, there's so much to love about the Mazda RX-7 FD that we almost forget about all of its faults.

One of the very popular car manufacturers from the Land of The Rising Sun, Mazda is known for its compact cars which offer great performance without breaking the bank. Among Mazda’s incredible history of cars, the RX7 FD has managed to capture the minds and hearts of gearheads all over the world. Not many JDM cars out there have possessed the imagination quite like the Mazda RX7 FD has.

Be it popular video games like Need For Speed, or mainstream Hollywood movies like The Fast and The Furious, the RX7 rose in prominence through the rise of tuner culture as well as a growing love of JDM cars in the 90s and early 2000s. Even though the RX7 FD’s production cycle came to an end in 2002, very soon after the turn of the century, it still remains a popular presence on the pre-owned market and continues receiving love from gearheads.

This love that the Mazda RX7 FD commands is not unwarranted at all, since it has always had a lot going for it. There is a lot to love about the car, and while the car remains timelessly impressive, it isn’t completely flawless. In that vein, here are 8 things we love about the Mazda RX-7 FD, and 2 reasons why we wouldn’t bring one home.

Mazda made their RX7 FD model very easy to modify, thanks to the fairly simple bodywork of their engine. This also made it one of the most popular cars in the tuning world. Modifiers have a lot of room to play around with, and some even took the engine to new heights by making it churn out a ridiculous 1000 horsepower.

The RX8 FD is one of the most modular Japanese sports cars ever made, which makes tuning it very easy and a lot of fun. Its low-slung design and light chassis make it a great car to enhance and tune. There are also those who have preferred to play around with the RX7 and turn it into a drift car for enhanced track usability.

Mazda is known for high-performance sports cars that remain affordable, and the RX7 was no exception. When Mazda released the RX7 FD, the base price of the car was around $30,000, which was an absolute bargain for a ride that performed as well as the RX7 did. Customers managed to get a greatly enjoyable ride that didn't break the bank and offered power, fun, and even more importantly, rarity.

While you might have to shell out a bit for the models today that have never been modified or tuned, which are increasing in rarity, it still remains a good deal because of the exclusivity the Mazda RX7 FD brings with it. After all, for so many years now, the car has been the poster child for affordable performance.

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It is common knowledge that the RX7 was a lot better received and cherished than its successor, the RX8. This also means that despite being more modern, the RX8's value has continued depreciating owing to its lukewarm reception. On the flip side, the RX 7 FD, for all the things it has going for it, has continued to appreciate in value.

A JDM classic legend whose appeal and value only go one way, up, the Mazda RX7 FD is a car you could bring home, drive for a few years until you're satisfied and fulfilled, and then sell for the same price you shelled out years ago, if not more than what you paid for it!

The Mazda RX7 FD isn't such an indelible part of the automotive industry without good reason. One of the biggest engineering developments for the FD RX7 was sequential turbocharging, which was leaps and bounds ahead of the time in terms of performance and the way the engine delivered power to the wheels.

A second stage turbo eliminated the turbo lag as well, and while it was Porsche who had achieved this feat beforehand, it was the Mazda RX7 FD that actually managed to deliver this technology to mass-production cars. The RX7 FD was the car that brought sequential turbocharging to the masses without absolutely demolishing their pockets.

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Why is it that gearheads always seem to prefer the FD RX7 over its successor, the Mazda RX-8? By all means, the RX8 should have been the better car, more refined and powerful. However, that was not the case. When the RX7 FD went into production, it made 255 horsepower stock, and in its final year, even though it was no longer sold in the U.S., it made close to 280 horsepower.

On the other hand, the RX-8's Renesis engine only managed to cough out 212 horsepower for its automatic variant, and the manual transmission setup was tuned to make 232 horsepower. There was also no sequential turbocharging present on the newer RX8 to keep affordability up, which meant it was naturally aspirated as opposed to the RX7's turbocharged 13B engine.

The automotive market in the 1980s was dominated by the wedge shape. However, in the 1990s, everything got rounded off and sharp edges were softened. While that might not have worked out very well for most 90s cars, somehow Mazda managed to come up with a great, timeless design for the RX7, and it was a successful one.

The FD Mazda RX7's lines seem to flow from front to back, making it a beautifully sleek sports car to look at. Plus, there was also practicality in its beauty, with its low-slung and aerodynamic shape making it great for drag racing. To this day, while the automotive design has come a long way, the Mazda RX7 FD's timeless design and appeal make it one of the most sought-after classics, and for good reason. This one is an absolute neck-breaker wherever it goes.

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The Mazda RX7's 13B REW rotary engine was a great engine and a labor of thirty years of love. It represented three whole decades of research and development from Mazda and was absolutely the pinnacle of rotary engine technology. Today, it can even be tuned to make 500 horsepower, albeit at the cost of engine life.

To this day, there is a huge aftermarket for this engine and its parts, and it stands as a testament to Mazda's engineering prowess and what they achieved with the 13B engine. Its successor, the Renesis engine for the RX-8, while being a reworked 13B engine, could never match up in performance since emission standards were getting stricter and Mazda had phased out the rotary engine altogether soon after that.

Mazda tasted a lot of racing success thanks to the RX7. In the twilight of its development phase, the Mazda RX7 stood for all the 100 wins it scored in the International Motor Sports Association. The RX-7 FD came along with all of that racing pedigree that added a sense of heightened pride in owning one of these cars.

Furthermore, it was also Mazda's rotary engine that had brought the most prominent success to Mazda. The Japanese brand won their one and only Le Mans race with their 787B car which had not one, but two 13B rotary engines stitched together.

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Anyone who has ever heard of the Mazda RX-7 has also heard of the dreaded Apex seals of the car. They're widely regarded as the weakest link in the otherwise mightily impressive rotary engine. In fact, almost all RX-7 owners have always come across this problem, and have had to resort to rebuilding the engine to fix the problem, which usually costs around $2,000.

The car's cooling system is a problem area owners need to keep an eye on as well. Plus, while there is a lot of good stuff that it brings to the table, the 13B engine devours oil a lot, which means you'll find yourself constantly having to check and maintain your oil levels in order to keep the car running well, otherwise it would become a pain to keep running.

Fuel economy on a car is no longer something we can just brush off, what with the rising gas prices. That said, the Mazda RX-7 doesn't make much sense as a daily driver anymore owing to its unimpressive fuel economy of 15 MPG in the city and a combined 18 MPG economy on both its manual and automatic variants.

With hybrid engines and all-electric vehicles taking center stage, the internal combustion engine is soon to be a thing of the past. Even then, there are plenty of gasoline-powered engines—and that too in Japanese cars if you're a JDM purist—that offer much better economy than the Mazda RX7 FD today.

If it has wheels and an engine, Samarveer Singh is going to be obsessed with it. He is a budding Indian motorcycle racer, competing at the national level in his country in his very first year, chasing his dream around every corner of the racetrack. A touring enthusiast, Samarveer is forever stuck between the urge to constantly redline his bike, or save its clutch plates for longer.