Efini RX-7 History

Announced in October 1991 and on sale in Japan by December of that year, the FD3S-chassis RX-7 was the third and final generation of Mazda's rotary sports car — and in Japan it wore the ɛ̃fini badge rather than the Mazda name, reflecting the multi-channel sales strategy of the era.

Its 13B-REW twin-rotor engine was the first mass-produced sequential twin-turbocharger system exported from Japan, producing 255 PS at launch and ultimately reaching the Japanese voluntary 280 PS ceiling in later homologation-spec variants. The design, penned at Mazda's Irvine, California studio by Wu-Huang Chin and Tom Matano under chief designer Yoichi Sato, featured an ultra-low drag coefficient and kept the car's weight close to 1,260 kg.

Japanese-market variants ranged from the base Type S and lightweight Type R to the track-focused Type RS (with Bilstein suspension and the full 280 PS output) and the grand-touring Touring X with automatic transmission. When ɛ̃fini dealerships were absorbed into Mazda Japan in 1997, the car continued as the Mazda RX-7 through 2002, but the Japanese enthusiast community still identifies the 1991–1997 cars as the ɛ̃fini RX-7.