6 APRIL 2020 The joy of driving, lightweight design and the rotary engine: three elements that define Mazda’s DNA – and continue to fascinate the team at the Hiroshima-based carmaker. One Mazda stands out from all the rest for giving all these elements a new level of meaning, cementing the compact rotary-engined sports car in the minds of driving enthusiasts in the UK and around the world. Launched in 1978, the Mazda RX-7 was Mazda’s first mass-market sports car and would go on to become the best-selling rotary powered vehicle in history. And it also propelled the brand’s success on the race track to unprecedented levels. The distinctive howl of the RX-7’s twin-rotor powerplant rocked race tracks in Europe and beyond from the beginning, winning the British Saloon Car Championship in 1980 and 1981 and demonstrating its reliability by taking overall victory at the 1981 24 Hours of Spa – the first Japanese car to achieve this. It was a golden age elsewhere, too. In the US, th...