Keepers: Mazda RX-7—Community

 As one would expect with niche, Japanese tuner cars such as the RX-7, there exists a very dedicated enthusiast community that loves to tweak, tune, and show these cars off every bit as much as driving them.

During our shopping segment we mentioned RX7Club.com , and for anyone even remotely interested in the RX-7 lifestyle, this site is a prerequisite for pretty much anything rotary related. RX7Club.com has one of the most comprehensive buyer’s guides we’ve ever seen for a used car, thanks in part to a membership totaling nearly 130,000, making it the single largest collection of RX-7 enthusiasts in the world. Of course, the site also features generation-specific forums, general rotary forums, regional sections for seeking out local enthusiasts, an events section where large and small gatherings can be found, numerous tech forums covering everything from general maintenance to building psycho-drift machines, marketplace forums for buying/selling cars and parts, and vendor-specific forums where members can speak directly to companies that build the plethora of performance parts available for the RX-7. In short, if you want to get involved in the RX-7 community, start with RX7Club.com.

Tops on the RX-7 event list—or any other rotary-powered Mazda offering—is a small festival called SevenStock , held annually at Mazda’s North American headquarters in southern California. Hundreds of cars and thousands of people make the annual trip to pay homage to everything Rotary, and Mazda returns the favor by opening its corporate doors and showing off everything from prototypes to factory race cars. The event is also free to attend, making it the definitive RX-7 event of them all. If however you seek a bit more drive in your activities, RX-7 enthusiasts also gather on the opposite side of country for something called the Deals Gap Rotary Rally (DGRR). Located in the midst of the infamous “Tail of the Dragon” stretch of US-129 in North Carolina, this event centers around the twists and turns of what many consider to be the greatest driving road in the country. Other events such as a car show and banquet occupy the time when folks aren’t tearing around the Dragon, and with approximately 200 cars in attendance for the most recent rally this past April, it’s one of the larger Mazda meets in the country.