I have been asking myself how do you classify a car as "original"? Dose it have to be numbers matching? Never repainted? No upgrades?

At the dealership I work for, we rebuild motors for cars and replace heads due to problems, but dose this make a car unoriginal or considered molested? its also common for our body shop to touch up scuff marks on bumpers and other small damages. Sometimes when a car is new, defective parts are replaced with new ones. Or if somone replaces a part with an aftermarket one, such as a radiator.

An example, on my RX7, one of the fenders was hit many years ago, and the owner at the time had it repaired. Since its the original fender it can be considered and original car, but it has new paint on it. Is it molested?

I have been thinking this over lately and am unsure how to catigorize an "all original" car. What do you guys think?

 

if you're a purist, then yes, replacing a part takes away from its originality.

if you go to some concours type events, the cars that are worth the most are the ones that are in good condition but have never had any work done. maintenance is ok though

i have even seen a few cars/motor cycles, where its a barn find and they rebuilt the engine, but didn't clean it, so it still had the original dirt on it.

they get picky too, my dad's friend lost @pebble beach because the head bolts were not the correct ones.

i know these days you see a lot of TV shows where they just replace the whole car, minus the vin tag, but really that wouldn't fly with something that isn't a chevy.... and some things are a grey area, like race cars that have had many owners/sponsors. you have to figure out how/when you're restoring it to

furniture, watches, are all the same way.

 

Original if the part is replaced with the factory replacement. If it's an aftermarket replacement part then it's not original. Parts wear out and need to be replaced. It's the nature of cars. They take and take and take and every once in a while you get a smile and a thrill out of them.

 

no a factory replacement is a factory replacement, its not original. look at some of the muscle car guys, if its got the right head on the engine, but the date is wrong, then the car is worth less.

a car is only original once, and if you're going to do something ghastly like drive your car, then its not that important!

 

You'll never have a 'matching numbers' situation on a first-gen since Mazda apparently did not keep or publish the engine serial / VIN match information.

To me, "Original" has two meanings, directly opposed:

1) kept the same as the day it was made
2) One-of-a-kind, unique, exceptional, historically special

In the car world, 'original' seems mainly to mean no parts ever replaced, all "factory original."

This makes 'original' cars both rare, and totally useless as anything other than a conversation piece - - it turns a purposeful machine into a piece of sculpture, not a car. It increases their collectible value and the price some people would be willing to pay for it, but it a philosophical sense completely wastes the resources that went into it's original creation, as well as the desiger's purpose.

A car is meant to be driven and enjoyed, in my book. I have a lot more appreciation for a car that has been used as intended, and meticulously maintained in "good as new" condition, than I do for one that was rolled off the factory floor into a shrinkwrap bubble and stored in a cool, dry place for decades.

That doesn't mean I can't appreciate the beauty of a perfectly-kept 30-year-old museum piece with 12 miles on it, but I wouldn't own one - - as I don't run a museum. Cars are both an artwork, and a tool. The artistry is in the concept and design, though... when a half amillion of something have been made, none of them are "original art" any more. But some few of them will have history, if they are cared for well enough.

Just my opinion, of course.

 

i don't know if mazda japan kept track, i suspect they did, however it was all on PAPER (remember that?) and its been 30 years and they've had a couple fires and things like that, nevermind its in japan, and we have no real access. (i called mazda to try and get a key code for a european car, and they had a contact in japan to call)

in the USA, when these cars were sold mazda usa was 5 separate companies, and the procedure was (up to like 2004!) was all the info was with the CAR, and the SELLING DEALERSHIP, reported to mazda the vin/engine number/key code/color/and selling date, which is the important one, warranty starts when car is sold. then sometime in the 90's they put it on computer, but often the info is/was incomplete from the seller (think about it, they asked used car salesmen for documentation!), and some of the older cars (SA's) seem to have never made it into the computer, as the warranty for most of the cars was over a long time before the computer was invented/involved.

so was there an original engine? yes. CAN it be documented? sometimes. does it matter? no

 

I think for the purposes of us RX7 wonks, "original" would be a car with OEM-spec equipment, paint and trim.
This is as opposed to RESTORED TO original spec. (like a re-paint). Whether you want to carry that to the "n-th" degree of originality, ie how THAT PARTICULAR car came off the showroom floor vs. (like in my case) OEM equipment on my car that I _added_ in addition to what it came with. Some folks (me included) are actually doing things like re-installing the OEM wire-style hose clamps and dumping the newer-tech geared clamps, for the "Original" look. Of course my RX8 seats flush the whole concept down the toilet (tho in my defense, all my, er, "improvements" are back-wards compatible!).

People, as J9FDS3 alludes to, can get pretty goofy about what constitutes original - and with Million$$ cars the stakes are high and the diff can be $100s of Thou$and for incorrect bits. Fortunately for us, with 1st Gen RX7s production in the 1/2-millions, this will never be an issue...

Where you start to deviate from the One True Path would be things like new stereos, trick wheels, rear wings, etc. All a matter of taste tho even in our level of the "collector" food chain, auctions prove every day that "Original" / "Unmolested" cars consistently get more $$$ in resale than modified cars.

Really, unless you are sitting on (for eg) an under 10,000 mi as-new RX7, its all personal taste. Now, the guy with the under 10K mi car who wants to mod it? Him I would have words with...



Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

our Rx7 world is a great place to be, really. we get to have cool cars, and just enjoy em. to top it off once a year, mazda holds a religious ritual, just for us!

ive taken the Tr3 to a couple car shows, and its a nice enough driver to get lots of thumbs up driving around, but it doesn't even place in that world!

or even the montery historics. its people literally racing museum pieces... even the 787B gets lost there.... shoot even mark donohues 917/30 gets lost there.... when you park it next to a row of 13 ferrari GTO's.... if you're anywhere near montery in august, you should go

 

Stu knew it would only take me a little bit before I chimed in. There is one definative way to tell if your car is original other than you bought it new.... The window sticker has the engine number on it as well as paint codes and etc this is nearly the only way to tell. The mazda assembly lines used a computer punch card and every now and then i come across one but they are exceptionally rare and I can't read computer punch code. A well documented car will have all of the data with it warranty papers window sticker, service sheets, registrations, insurance papers, owners manual etc

 

glen reads punch card... you are right though, i have been playing with rx7's since the early 90's and i saw my first punch card a couple of years ago.

 

The 'dude is right of course - having the original paperwork is the crowning finish on The Word of a car's originality. Now if only we could find on of those old fridge-sized card-reading "computers" to sort out punch-cards?

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

I'm with DD on the orginality issue. I like to keep my car looking OEM
interior/exterior. This includes the waffles and the OEM light colors and such. I have
no problem with anything done under the hood as long as the tail pipe still
is a dual outlet, OEM looking exhaust.

I guess you could say I fall into the resto-mod camp. Restore as far as looks but
improve mechanicals and power. Until you open the hood on my car, you'd think it
was completely stock. Of course its not and I love it the way it is so far (think new
engine, bigger ports in the future ). I have remote locks and a connection for my
ipod but you can't see those mods in the interior and it still looks like a fresh SA
interior.

The only exterior mods I would contemplate would be period correct spoilers or
air dams designed and built when the car was new. Maybe another set of larger
wheels with track day tires but always keep the waffles with RWL for the street.

 

outside of the normal routine maintenance during it's lifetime, the term 'original' would mean it's condition is as it was when it rolled off the show room floor, no modifications of any kind. once anything from the aftermarket is added, it takes away from it's originality.

 

There are shades of originality. To me, an original car is one that is un-modified. That is, one that still has the same stlye and type of parts/components that came on the car when new. Mechanical things do wear out and need replacing and that should not detract from a cars originality. Once things like the type of wheels, or the color or sound system are changed or replaced the originality starts to go away. The more the changes the less original.

The biggest exception to this is the engine. It can be rebuilt, but once the heart is replaced (even with an identical type of power plant) it's generally regarded as less than "all original". The paint is another area that a lot of people view that if it ain't THE factory finish, it's something slightly less.

A car that still has all the actual components that is was born with, is another level of orginiality and generally regarded as the most authenic, original of the breed and normally valued as such, as long as everything is still in good condition and working order.

Documentation serves to prove or authenticate that the car is what it is claimed to be.

 

I think the fact that our cars have rotary engines is pretty damn original!

 

Considering my ultrasuede interior, repainted factory smog equipment, and other eccentricities, I can definitively say that my car is 100% original (1st definition), except for the parts that are 100% original (2nd definition). I'm going for "that throwback look," you know.

Any punch cards you need translated, send me a good clear photo.

 

Hollerith FTW!

 

I think I posted the translation key in a thread some time back.

Holes to letters/numbers is pretty easy. Translating the Japanese needs specialized help above my pay grade.