Spotted: A 1976 Mazda Roadpacer AP - A Holden with a 13B Rotary

This is my second visit to this car, and this time we get to see its interior & under the bonnet. The video has two parts. Part one talks about the Mazda Roadpacer in general, and Part two is a walk-around of this particular car.

The original Mazda Roadpacer video (and my first upload to this channel):

Music Credit:
Created by Dylan Benson, and used with permission and much appreciation.

[wasabicars]

Glad you liked it. Actually. the first part of this video was the first ever Wasabicars video I uploaded. Seeing as it was pretty light-on with regard to information, I thought I'd put some effort in and this was the result.

[boricua]

wow, the motor looks tiny in there. looks like you can fit two rotarys in there. i remember when i was a kid a guy in my town had a 70's nova with a rotary. i thought that was nuts!! this reminds me of it. never seen this mazda before, thanks for sharing this one!!

[butternut.]

A teacher at my school in New Zealand had one of these back in the early 90s...  I remember us wondering what the hell it was since we were all into Holden V8s at the time.

[Mechknight]

From everything I've read of the Roadpacer, the story starts thus:

In the early 70s, Holden wanted to experiment with rotary engines. The best rotary builders in the world at the time being Mazda, Holden approached Mazda management, and asked if they could make a deal. Mazda asked for a set of body dies for the HJ Premier, and Holden got their rotaries.

Holden wanted to power Toranas with rotary engines as another option in the engine lineup, but the project was a failure. I have no idea what Mazda were thinking when they dropped a rotary into the Roadpacer. They could have taken Toyota's option and bought some European 6 cylinder design. They could have asked Holden for an engine to power it. They could have made a quad chamber rotary, any of these ideas would have done better. It's the reason why only about 600 of them were ever made.

It's ironic that the engine bay looks so crowded. In its original form, there's so much room in the engine bay that you could sit in the engine bay while you work on it. A small block Chevy V8 will fit without any modifications other than springs. A big block will fit with some minor modifications to the inner guards.

[Lyricoholic]

I've found something on Wikipedia.
Only 799 Pieces of this were build. I think it's a really rare Car

[wasabicars]

It is, and I'm very happy to have seen two. I'm always on the lookout for these. :)

[sumatoborukiSaru]

Interesting how they grafted the RX4 reverse lights into the Holden HX bumper. :-?

[Xrocker]

That RX-7 next to it is lookin preety good too

[iritr]

So were these cars sent to from aussie japan as semi-assembled, then put together in Hiroshima with the rotary engines?

[wasabicars]

And that reminds me, I've got to go back & shoot a vid of that RX-7!

[wasabicars]

There's a link in the description to the Wasabicars site but there's not so much info there. And sadly, there aren't many surviving examples of the car. I'm sure I'll do another video on tis car in the future so I'll try to include some good info on it. :)

[TheRosemontag]

I enjoy watching you're Mazda videos. I own a Mazda 3 in Canada, do you know if Mazda 3 has a rotary engine like the RX-8?

[wasabicars]

Yes, some of the footage in this video was in fact my first ever upload to this channel. There had always been a few vids that I thought could be a lot better and this was one. As I had extra footage of the engine & interior I thought, what the hay (hey)?

[asdf]

WasabiCars,
This is not the only time in the 1970's when a Japanese manufacturer imported a Holden body - Isuzu did the same thing at roughly the same time with the HQ Statesman De Ville, and called it, not surprisingly "Isuzu Statesman De Ville". Approximately 250 were sold in Japan between 1973 and 1976. Have you ever seen one of them?

[hnappa]

This is a very interesting holden/mazda. do you know how much they sell for?

[scottjinx]

An amazing piece of Mazda Rotary history, it's a bit of a shame they didn't give the engine a bit more thought being in a big Holden & all, they could have designed an early version of the 13B Turbo, a low boost carby setup would have made a great difference to this very kool ride hey, still awesome tho :)

[wasabicars]

Ouch. When my VK Calais was getting 17~18L per 100kms, I was pissed.

[devolutionrc]

The Holden version of this body depending on the model had a 202ci straight 6, 253 ci v8 or 308 v8 if memory serves me. So yeah a 1.3l even though it's a rotory seems small.

[sumatoborukiSaru]

Keep coming back to this video every year or so, for some strange reason. 🤔

[HOON]

Cool cross-brand Frankenstein there.That 13b just looks ridiculous in such a huge engine bay. Bet this big thing was pretty slow even in 1970's terms. Glad to see that they're looking after the interior. Paint can be fixed.