The Wankel rotary engine works on a principle so elegant it's almost suspicious: a triangular rotor spinning in an epitrochoidal housing, doing the work of intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust in a single continuous motion instead of the back-and-forth reciprocation of a piston engine. Felix Wankel patented it in 1929. Mazda licensed it in 1961. And then, for the next sixty years, Mazda was essentially the only major manufacturer stubborn enough to keep using it.
The RX-7 was the rotary's greatest advertisement. Three generations: the FB (1978–1985), the FC (1985–1992), and the FD (1992–2002). The FD is the one everyone means when they say "RX-7" — the twin-turbo 13B-REW, the pop-up headlights that vanished in the facelift, the sequential turbocharger system that hit like a second stage on a rocket. Motor Trend called it one of the greatest sports cars of the 1990s. The import tuner community called it a god.
The RX-7's place in JDM culture is specific. It was never the Supra — it wasn't the horsepower king, it wasn't in the Fast and Furious poster. It was the driver's car, the one that handled like it was lighter than it was (because it was lighter than everything else with comparable power), the one that rewarded skill over budget. The rotary engine was part of this identity: temperamental, high-revving, oil-hungry, and capable of a sound that no piston engine can replicate. The "brap" — the characteristic exhaust note of a ported rotary — is not an onomatopoeia, it's a tribal identifier.
Mazda stopped making the RX-7 in 2002 and stopped making the rotary-powered RX-8 in 2012. The rotary's Achilles heel was always emissions and fuel economy. But the community persists — rebuilds, swaps, the specific dedication of people who chose the complicated engine because it was better, not because it was easier.
This tee is from that era. Vintage. One.
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