I have stumbled a nice find. 1980, Aurora White, red interior, 80,xxx miles, original owner. I was wondering if the red interiors were rare on SAs. I always see black and brown. He says it's original, and since hes the original owner I believe him.

 

well, my early 78/79 SA was an aurora white with red or burgundy interior. so thats 2 for white red combo

 

i'm used to the 84-85's where it seems like 80% are red inside, but it does seem like most SA's are black

 

Sounds exactly like my first RX-7... in 1998. Aurora White '80,red interior, 89k.

Well, it wasn't the ORIGINAL owner. The original owner gave it to his daughter, and I bought it from her...

 

In SA's yea, they are kind of rare, in subsequent years the burgundy and wine colors were used a lot more extensively and so now, you’re used to seeing a lot of them overall. Some of it has to do with the exterior colors available between SA's and FB's.

In 79 (the N/A market cars) you had white, red, silver, yellow, bronze and blue exteriors. Due to changes and development that first year, some detail changes took place over the course of the 79 production run. I like to break it out roughly to early production (Feb-Jun 78), mid production (July-Dec 78) and late production (Jan-Jun 79) built cars.

Some early cars had two choices of interiors, others only came in basic black to begin with. The bronze, silver, blue and yellow cars could be found in two varieties.

A majority of Sonic Bronze cars have the red plaid seat inserts with a 2 tone orangey / brownish red interior. I've also saw a couple without the plaid seat inserts, just solid orangey / brownish red dots and interior.

Same with some of the Sunbeam Silver & Daytona Blue cars. I've saw both of these exteriors with the white plaid seat inserts and black interiors. But in reverse of the bronze cars, these plaid equipped interiors are much less common than silver and blue cars with just the basic solid black interior with black red dots.

Spark Yellow is the other exterior color that was fitted with either a solid basic black or 2 tone brown / tan color with again, red dot style seats either solid tan in the 2 tone interior or black in the black interior.

Early and mid production white and red cars seemed to come exclusively with black red dot interiors. The later production 79's (cars built from Jan-Jun 79) saw the velour seat inserts begin to appear which is when the burgundy came into the mix applied as an alternate in Aurora White cars. At this time, red dot seats with black became kind of the basic interior across the board with either black, grey or burgundy velour seat inserts as kind of a upgraded interior and the plaid no longer used.

The 79 Limited was introduced at this point and used a bluish grey velour and black interior wrapped in Beat Black exterior. (a greyish / black color-depending on lighting)

1980 saw the velour interiors become pretty much the standard with leather being the upgrade in the LS cars and the special grey and red striped fabric used in the 10th A/E cars. I’m not sure if the red dots were even available or not anymore. Possibly in the S models.

 

is your red interior hot?

mine is black, and the a/c almost makes it bearable on a sunny summer day, as in not quite. For $1300 there is a shop that will redo my interior. White would be great for the heat, but impossible to keep clean. Beige is well beige. Tan is blah. Pink would come off as faded red at best. Gay at worst. Red would look cool. Orange would look cool with my red car.

Black in New Jersey on a sunny winter below freezing day, the heater isn't needed.

 

Tinting your windows helps a lot; better to keep the heat out in the first place than to worry about absorption once it's inside.

Black interior will always be the hottest all else being equal; absorbs full spectrum & retains as heat.

 

true! the Rx8 ac is a little underwhelming, and my current car has tinted windows and it makes a huge difference.

actually one of the design flaws in the Rx8 is that the dash is this giant piece of black plastic, so basically the climate control is there to control the dash temp, and if its cold you're cold, if its hot you're hot. its under a big window too, so in the summer its hard to keep it cool.

 

Found one online. It looks just like this... This is an Aus car BTW.

1980 MAZDA RX7 SUPER DELUXE - JUST Cars

 

window tinting, what about night time driving?

 

^Not sure its even legal to tint windshields......

That Aussie car looks pretty nice. First time I've saw a speaker dash in a 1980. Also, it has 79 style arm rests and no extra rubber pads on the rear bumper like N/A 80's.

 

In pensylvania no window tint below the as1 line on windshields. Pick ups/suv/ vans everything can be tinted but the driver and pass window+ windshield.
Cars must be a certain% visibility which isn't much darker than factory tints. Unless your a cop then its okay for your personal car/ truck to be pitch black tint.....

 

New Jersey after market window tint will immediately get you a ticket.

Alabama allows tint, but there are specific restrictions on how dark it can be on the different windows.

Texas Florida Cali and Louisiana allows after market tint, but I don't know the details.

My question is about visibility at night.

 

Unless you have really poor eyesight you can see through tinted windows at night.

 

Cali you can tint but only the rear side windows and hatch...I tinted the driver and pass doors with a light tint and haven't been stopped yet, but I know many who have. Windshield is only allowed a "visor strip" of tint along the top.

 

i agree and no more than 6" max width strip of tint on the windshield is allowed.

however back in days we used black contact paper on thewindshield instead of a tint. never had a problem with popos.

 

Actually the front window can only be tinted down to the "as is" line...

Here in TN you can have 35% on the front 2 and anything behind the front 2 can be any percentage tint.

 

Of course that never stops anyone lol. Personally I have the strip on the front down farther than or should be and its 5% and the front 2 are 15% and the rear 3 are 5% as well, I havent had any trouble with the popo.