Koguchi-styled Turbo II - Machine Check
To set the mood for this blog post I recommend listening to “Earth, Vol 2”. Close to one hour of wonderful, classic drum & bass.
The first generation Mazda RX7 was introduced in 1978, and became very popular amongst the American audience. This prompted the Mazda design team to design the second generation RX7 towards the American market by taking inspiration from other sport cars that were popular in the region. A lot of design cues from a certain german-designed front engined, pop-up headlighted sports car can be seen in the second generations silhouette.
The design wasn’t the only thing that was inspired by other sports cars of the time and reworked from the previous generation. The suspension was upgraded to an independent rear suspension, the steering to a rack and pinion setup and disc brakes became standard just to name a few key improvements. This made the RX7 a great grand tourer sports car.
The second generation, FC, was introduced in 1985.
The Turbo II version of the FC was introduced in 1987. It featured a 13B rotary engine with a twin-scroll turbocharger, with an intercooler mounted directly underneath the model-specific hood scoop.
Although the engine setup of this Turbo II is completely stock, it’s 200hp is more than enough to make this 1.3 ton machine move.
There are a lot of Japanese cars running smaller engines, but looking at an RX7 engine bay always twists my mind. The rotary engine is so incredibly compact compared to piston engines, and the small original intercooler covering the whole engine itself doesn’t make it look less unique.
The thought behind this build is to keep building on the grand tourer sports car-base that Mazda created. The chassi is very controlled from the factory, which is something the owner doesn’t want to ruin with too many upgrades. The car sits on fairly soft (8k/6k) BC Racing Drop Low coilovers, and a pending RE-Amemiya LSD will help with that extra control and road-feel for the driver. Other than that the chassi is pretty much stock. The goal with this car is to have a nice night-cruise car that is still fully capable of some streeto action. With the goal for the car being these type of activities, the licenseplate has been deleted from all photos and the owners name shall be kept secret, but we’ll call him M.
Source: Drift Tengoku Legend of 180SX full scan by @malekzain13
A few years ago, while getting sucked deeper and deeper into the old school jdm scene M eventually stumbled across Yoshinori Koguchi’s old black, Hot Road kitted, Technospeed Z2 equiped 180sx RPS13. A car with great, classic, aggressive stance. Amazed by the wonderful car he continued to follow the Koguchi-180sx-trail and found his older 180sx chuki. A car with simpler shapes, closer to an OEM look and “a perfect combo of low ridehight, 90’s street style, good wheels with nice fitting tyres and cool fitment” according to M. This is the look that M decided to take inspiration from with his Turbo II.
The OEM Turbo II boot spoiler and the Series 5 front lip helps to mimic the look of the legendary 180sx’s Pignose lip on a Chuki front and OEM spoiler. The OEM rear bumper already has a little hump/lip which looks fairly similar to the Type-X rear valence on the 180sx as well. And with already being red this really just happened to be the perfect base for a tribute-car.
The wheels are fresh new-old-stock Rays Volk Evolution Mesh 3 (17x7.5 +44 with a 30mm spacer up front and 17x8.5 +44 with a 25mm spacer in the rear).
The car already sat on some 16” mesh wheels when M bought it. They were pretty soon replaced by a set of Stich Mesh wheels in full chrome. The car looked really good in this spec, but the goal had always been a set of Rays Volk Evo 3’s. The same wheels that Koguchi ran together with a pair of Work VS-X9’s. During a visit to my garage, he got the chance to test fit my friend Dennis’s Rays Evo 3 wheels (same wheels that I borrowed for my S13 a while back) on the FC which was when he decided that he HAD to get a set for himself.
Just as he was looking around to buy a set of Evo 3’s, mostly via Yahoo auctions, a NOS set miraculously poped up for sale which he bought immediately.
The interior absolutely screams 80s. Black leather-shaped plastic (although looks way better then most other cars from this era), funky buttons and knobs and orange colored text for all the labels and gauges. And the font of choice on the power window switch is just icing on the 80’s cake.
The black and orange OEM theme was continued with the aftermarket gauges. Custom DEPO gauges with black faces, white lettering and red/orange backlighting does not break the stock-vibe. The vent-placement of the gauges is another homage to Koguchis 180sx,
A (very expired FIA-approved) Sparco Ultra seat will help you stay in place while taking corners like Ryosuke Takahashi. And an old school Nardi Classic wheel, an R-Magic shift knob and checkered Lardel floor mats continues the classic feeling.
The accessories are really picked with the 90’s style in mind. And this theme continues with some old CD’s and PS1 games in the door compartments.
So, why did M choose an FC? He started his japanese car-journey with a RHD Mazda Roadster (MX5/Miata) NB two years ago. Now picture the rest of this story like it was in an episode of Initial D.
During an early foggy morning he was driving his NB up to the Japdays event some 400km’s up north. In his rear view mirror he saw a low-stanced car with pop up headlights approaching him. The machine flashed it’s turnsignals and moved over to the overtaking lane. Slowly driving past M, he got to see the beautiful silhuettes of what turned out to be a grey, low RX7 FD on Work Meisters. Right then and there he decided that an FD was THE car for him.
“But wait, you said FD? This is an FC?”. Correct.
Well shortly after seeing the FD M sold the NB Roadster and bought himself an FD project car. The car was already in pieces and “didn’t have all that much that needed to be done”. We’ve all been there… M realized that this FD project was just too expensive for what he could realistically spend.
During the FD build he started watching Initial D, and came to realize that the RX7 FC that Ryosuke Takahashi drives (who happened to be his favourite character due to his analytic and technical driving style) was really cool too, and that an FC is the closest thing to an FD you can come without spending as much money.
He traded the FD project for a white, 400hp FC and drove that for a while, but realized that it was too modded, and aggressive, for the driving style that he was looking for. He sold the white FC and began looking for his dream spec FC,
With night cruising and streeto drifting in mind, the Turbo II version of the FC was the pretty obvious choice with it’s superior power output and sturdier drivetrain. And the OEM bodykit and all of the S5 spec goodies like the seats, cluster with the boost gauge, colormatched exterior trim etc was just a bonus.
FC Turbo II S5’s don’t really pop up for sale that often, so M went for the contacting-all-owners-strategy instead. We don’t really have that many FC’s in Sweden in this spec so the contact list was pretty short, but luckily he managed to get in contact with the owner of this clean, low milage, bone stock example and the owner was willing to sell.
I can’t say that Ive driven all too many car-models, but the FC Turbo II really feels like the perfect drivers car. It’s such a well balanced car when it comes to power to weight ratio, it has a very stable chassi with nice ride comfort and a quiet exhaust drone. And the few modifications that has been added since I drove it stock has just made it better. The only downside from a 2m tall persons perspective is the low roof… But for a normal-sized human it’s not a problem.
Future plans for the car include installation of the RE-Amemiya differential, learn to handle and to understand the car during hard driving situations, and to “make sure it doesn’t break, and not crash”.
The driving style that M want’s to go for is high speed, low angle, placing the car close to the inner clips following the racing line. An early drifting style often seen in older drifting videos due to most cars having stock angle and “low” horsepower compared to a lot of the cars we see now, or even saw during the early D1 SL times. This was also the style Koguchi used during the time he drove his red 180sx, following the same reasons just mentioned.
The FC truly is a japanese icon and the styling of this example is well executed. Long-time future plats is an engine rebuild and upgrade to place it comfortably at a safe 250-300hp. The exterior will get a bodykit (to follow Koguchis evolution from the red 180sx to the black one mentioned earlier) that will give the car an early 2000’s style rather than this 90’s look. But M has no rush getting there.
Thank you for checking out the post, wether you read it all or just scrolled through the photos. Making posts like these is time consuming but well worth it in the end and I will do my best to pick up the blog post game again.
All photos are taken by me. Please do not re-distribute without credit.
Owner of the car: @saiteki.garage