By Alex Kierstein
I submit to you this – the most 1980s vehicle to grace this crazy globe we call Earth. It’s managed to survive these past 28 years without turning into a roughly rectangular oxide sculpture, and is currently enjoying an extended run of salad days in Deutschland, of all places. Grab some louvered glasses and a pocket calculator, and make the jump for more.
Watch this video to get in the mood.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn2zHKbKDKo[/youtube]
The Berlin Wall’s still up, perestroika wouldn’t be a glimmer in Gorbachev’s eye for another three years, and Isuzu still makes cars. You’re a young, successful chap in West Germany looking to get a car that’ll make Easterners want to defect. It needs to be as forward-looking as you – a car that will invoke the distant 1990s! Ach! What about a Mazda 929 Coupe?
Money must have been a concern for the first purchaser, because unfortunately this 929 isn’t equipped with the highest capitalist-spec 2 liter turbo motor, making do with the 90 horsepower MA engine. That’s not to say you couldn’t cruise in technophile style, with a digital dashboard and an array of futuristic buttons that made your Atari console look like an archaic relic. This amazing survivor is unrestored, wearing original paint, and might be the most cherry ’83 Mazda 929 still in existence. Click through to the Japanese Nostalgic Car forums for more photos.
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Greg Kachadurian
Most '80s vehicle? The Subaru XT laughs at you.
<img src="http://forum.avtoindex.com/foto/data/media/71/XT_4WD_Turbo_1986_30.jpg" width="500">
Confession time: I desperately want one of these.
Of course. We all do.
i see one of those quite often, never knew they were from the 80s… they look quite different to anything else on the street.
Especially if it had the cute digital zooming-to-the-distance dash.
<img src="http://www.doubleyoudigital.nl/imgsold/digidash_subaruxt.jpg" width=400>
Ohhh! Night Driver by Atari!
didnt they also have a funky 1 spoke steering wheel with a bunch of buttons all over it? I cant find a picture, but I believe the spoke was off to one side.
It looks like a pistol…aimed in the general direction of your passenger…
<img src="http://www.carlustblog.com/images/2008/03/14/subaruxt3.jpg" width="300">
And don't forget the "floating" button pods that stuck out from the sides of the steering column! To me, it ranks right up there with the Edsel for über-awesome dashboard weirdness.
I can barely tell the difference, but I love them both nonetheless!
Ah, the XT. Mom's last(in a long line of) Seew-bah-roo. So aerodynamically slick she left a 48oz styrofoam
glass of tea on the rear plate insert and drove from 635/75 to Grayson County and it never moved!
So impressed she did it again the next night to see if it was a fluke- it wasn't! 9yrs, 300k, 100usd trade-in value.
Desperately tried to get her to get the SVX, but her Inner Hoon cried out for the hi-po Ferd GT.
Praise be to Murilee.
(nibbles ate the 1st attempt at this post)
I see the Mazda as somewhere halfway between the Subaru XT and the mid-eighties Audi 80/90, which I guess were both still years away when this car was built. Did any later eighties car inherit the mazda's awesomeful wheel covers though?
subaru Alcyone was the 6 cyl sleeper, i still see the odd one here in NZ
Genau!
Ich liebe diese Überlebenden. Es erstaunt mich immer wieder, wenn es eine untere Spezifikation Überlebende ist. Warum würden Sie halten eine geringe Spezifikation Modell in so gutem Zustand? Weil Sie lieben Ihr Auto.
Show off!
Well, to be honest, there were a few words I wasn't sure of, so I put the whole thing in the
BorgGoogle Translator.I know this breaks my personal rule about no (more) cars with slushboxes and double-digit horsepower, but I still might be content to buy it, and sit in the driveway looking at it.
We are the robots. We are the robots. I'll have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Thank you.
Anyway, thanks for posting about a car I had no idea existed. Is that second window between the B and C pilars or is it an opera window? I can't figure out how a car could rack up over 90000km and be in such a nice shape…
Yeah this one is sufficiently Hoonable even though the roof is to short. As an aside, did Mazda bring this bodystyle 929 Stateside? It seems to me the first one I remember was the bigger, rounder one. But I could be wrong though.
Not this generation, but a Wankel version was brought over in the mid-'70s for a couple of years as the RX-5 Cosmo. It wasn't a success and none of the later Cosmos were imported.
<img src="http://priuschat.com/forums/attachments/freds-house-pancakes/18749d1253285492-game-called-cars-rx5-4.jpg" width="500/">
ok, so it's not coincidental that the 929 carries on a version of that weird centrally located opera window.
I don't know about the later car, but the little central window on the '70s job could actually be rolled down.
i had one of these with the 13b and manual box with a park gear..weirdest thing ever
For some reason, I really love the RX-5 Cosmos. I would love to stuff a 5.0 in one.
Hey, fun boys, get a room!
You win at the internet.
It was the first thing that popped into my head.
This was the second…..played the crap out of this record at the old college radio station.
[youtube MBjhHq6qp-k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBjhHq6qp-k youtube]
Cheese grater hubcaps and a clear glass b-pillar, slick.
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/IMG_9992.jpg"width="600”>
going with the DeLorean here
I don't recall ever seeing one of these before. This likely being one of the few times I've seen a picture of one. Wonderfully cool little car. I learned something today, so my day is done. Brefass scotch time.
"unfortunately this 929 isn’t equipped with the highest capitalist-spec 2 liter turbo motor, making do with the 90 horsepower MA engine"
The highest spec motor in these 929s didn't have pistons. It was the 12a turbo engine, later seen in the Japanese-only RX-7 turbo (you'd call them the last of the FB-series in the 'States — the ones that came as the GSL-SE with the 13b atmo engine).
These 929s are still around in Australia and are available for beer money, though not usually a nice as that one.
Yes, but didn't they call those Cosmos?
Mazda naming in Japan is… inscrutable, at least to me.
This one may have been a Luce in Japan, but you could also get a Luce with the rotary.
Didn't someone try to convert one of these into a Ferrari 400/412?
My family owned a '78 GLC, an NA Miata, a '93 Protege, an '89 626, a '96 626, a 929 sedan, a 323 sedan, two different MPVs, an '03 Protege5, and a 2011 Mazda5. We're Mazda crazy. Yet I've never, ever, heard of this. Weird.
Our fellow Hoon, and the blogger I met in Naples last week for lunch, spotted one of these, although a few years newer and sans opera window, while in South America last month. Check out his cool, latest V.I.S.I.T.'s here.
http://karakullake.blogspot.com/2011/01/south-lim…
I'll be following along as he chronicles his month long trip through that region. I think some of my fellow Hoons will enjoy the ride also.