While the rest of the automotive world worked with pistons, Mazda was never a brand to abide by the status quo, and decided to invest its money into developing small-but-potent rotary engines.
As we've seen over the years with high-end cars, the more interesting the engine, the less reliable it is (take BMW's infamous V10 M5 for instance). And unfortunately for Mazda, its rotary mills fell into this category.
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Thanks to this unfavourable reliability, tuners have been swapping out the RX-7's 13B-REW engine for years, replacing it with things like an LS1 V8 which are a dime a dozen over in America.
As you can expect, this has created a divide between Mazda purists and people who are all too happy binning the twin-turbo rotary for a few Bald Eagles under the hood, but what if there was another option?
It turns out that EV-swapped RX-7s are also a thing, as one was recently listed on our site with an asking price of below $25,000. But before you buy it, there's a bit of a catch.
According to the listing, this battery-powered Mazda was built by a high-end mechanic over in Japan before being shipped down to New Zealand, but it isn't currently running.
Here, an electric motor is connected to the car's standard six-speed manual transmission which still sends power to the rear wheels.
It supposedly needs new batteries to get going again, but as to how much that will cost is anyone's guess. It will also need to be complied before it can be registered on the road here.