Spirit Machine
I’ve owned this car almost 16 years. I bought it the summer before my senior year of high school, a few hours after taking the ACT. It was my first car, and to buy it I spent nearly all the money I had been stashing away for 3 years from after-school and summer jobs. I had been looking at RX-7s since reading about the rotary when I was 14 or so, and having spent some time riding 2 stroke motocross bikes, the rotary seemed like a kindred spirit to those engines - it required lots of revs to make power, and it burned oil by design. On the dirt bikes, I enjoyed the challenge of really having to keep an engine singing to go fast, and I thought the rotary power in the RX-7 would be a similar experience. It was also simple and lightweight, which are two qualities I’ve always felt were crucial to making a car enjoyable to drive and own. At that time, the RX-7 really had its own mystique in my mind (honestly it still does), but even then I had no notion of where the car would take me, in both literal and figurative senses.
Photo Credit: Greg Vargo
For many years I simply drove the car on the street, but over time I began to see the car as not just an instrument to enjoy driving, but also as a blank canvas for expression, and since I never really got into drawing or painting, the RX-7 became my outlet. I kept lowering the car more and more(some would say beyond logic and reason), started building 14” wheels by the pair, had an artist friend custom paint my fixed bucket seat, and added various small details - all with the goal of sort of making the car a character or a personality in its own story, with lots of presence while rolling down the road. It has become this little lightweight street fighter, skating just above the road surface with raucous noise and fireballs from the exhaust. It’s definitely no longer a comfortable highway cruiser, but on the right road or track it always proves exciting to drive and feels quite a bit faster than the numbers (102 whp and 85 ft lbs) would lead anyone to believe. For about 9 years now I’ve also drifted the car, and the twitchy chassis and narrow powerband are challenging but rewarding in a way that never feels stale, so I’ve stuck with it long after many of my friends have moved on from the cars they originally built - to more capable or more powerful drift cars.
Photo Credit: Miranda Alley Photography
All those years ago I told myself I would sell the car if it ever lost the spirit that made it exciting to drive, but in its current iteration it feels most true to form and pure in purpose, even if a project car is never truly finished. Also, in some respect driving the car is like visiting an old friend, since it’s been in my life long before I had even met some of the people who are now closest to me. Partially because of this car, I’ve been introduced to people who have become my friends hopefully for life, some of which have traveled across national borders and hundreds of miles just to hang out for a long weekend. To some degree, driving the car is a bit like wearing your heart - or at least your interests on your sleeve, and the ones who get it tend to seek each other out. Even if the car doesn’t take on its own character, and in the end is just an assembled mass of steel and glass and the refinery processed remains of a triceratops, it has effectively brought people together who otherwise would remain strangers, and in doing so it proves greater than the sum of its carefully curated but possibly cross-threaded parts.
This year, I’d like to fix some little issues on the car: the ill-fitting front bumper, the beginnings of rust on the lower quarter panels or “pockets,” the crack midway down the exhaust system from the lack of ground clearance. Realistically though, I say I want to fix those things every year, and what really happens is that I just keep driving and enjoying the car, possibly going so far as to change the oil and bolt check the suspension. After 16 years I’m still keen for that first shakedown drive of spring, where to my delight and my neighbors’ dismay the little 12a under the hood announces that it’s still running strong, and another season of driving begins.
Not everyone understands my enthusiasm for this RX-7, and some of my friends even refuse to ride in it. But on those rare occasions when I pass a Rav4 on the highway, and see the little kid in the back seat with his face pressed against the glass, visibly thrilled to see this silver arrow flying low - I’m incited with a little hope that driveways in the future will continue to harbor old cars on jack stands, with owners who see not just a mode of transportation, but a creative entity with a life of its own. - DFA
Photo Credit: Daxton Scholl - Drift Pizza Media
