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Junkyard Gem: 1988 Mazda 323 GTX

Back in early 2007, when the late Davey G. Johnson got me my first job writing for an automotive publication (well, unless you count writing for the Year One catalogs back in the mid-1990s) and I took on this goofy pen name for real, I didn't quite grasp that any readers might be interested in the stuff I saw during my frequent junkyard trips. So, when I took my crappy Nikon Coolpix 2500 to the now-defunct Pick Your Part in Hayward, California, and saw a super-rare Mazda 323 GTX among all the Tercels and Rabbits in the IMPORTS section, I just took a few shots of this interesting car for my own enjoyment. These days, I'll take more than 100 photographs of a junkyard car of such great historical significance, editing them down to the best couple of dozen, but in March of 2007 I got just three of the 323 GTX. Robert Capa had his Magnificent Eleven at D-Day, and I've got the Magnificent Three of the GTX. Here they are. Any Mazda 323 of the immediate post-GLC era is a real junkyard rarity today, but Mazda sold very few of the all-wheel-drive, turbocharged homologation-special 323s over here during the 1988 and 1989 model years. A mere 1,243 of these cars made it to North American streets. Back in 2007, they weren't worth much (in fact, they still aren't incredibly valuable, if we go by Bring a Trailer real-world sale prices), and so this one showed up in El Pulpo's yard. These cars wouldn't be considered particularly fast by 21st-century standards, now that we've had decades of street-legal Mitsubishi Lancer Evos and Subaru WRXs flinging snow and mud around, and they tended to grind their powertrain components into a costly oil-and-metal-shaving slurry. But they were maniacally cool in the late 1980s, and that's enough. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. "Even with the sun and heavy rain, I made it here faster with my car!"

Toyota will build new SUV at Alabama plant it's building with Mazda

WASHINGTON — Toyota Motor Corp said Wednesday it will build a new sport utility vehicle at its $1.6 billion joint venture assembly plant in Alabama rather than produce Corolla cars. The largest Japanese automaker announced in January 2018 it would build the factory in Alabama in a joint venture with Mazda. Toyota said the shift is due to "a growing consumer appetite for light trucks and SUVs." Mazda announced in February 2019 that it would build a new SUV at the plant. Toyota said it still expects the plan to start production in 2021. Construction remains on schedule, and hiring has begun. The plant could create up to 4,000 new jobs and build 300,000 vehicles annually. Corolla production will remain at Toyota's plant in Blue Springs, Miss.

Mazda CEO closes door on talk of RX sports car revival

Some rumors in the auto industry simply refuse to die. Over the last decade, a few of the strongest have focused on Japan. A few years ago, we could have explained away the constant whispering over a new Toyota Supra, Acura NSX or Mazda RX-7 as nostalgia for Japan's golden era of performance. Today, though is different.
We already have the Nissan GT-R, and, thanks to the Toyota FT-1 Concept, a Supra successor finally appears to be on the way. Acura will someday, allegedly, deliver on its promise to put the NSX on sale. So where does that leave the third member of the Japanese performance trio mentioned above? Well, um, it still isn't happening.
"We don't have that kind of vehicle in our future product plan," Mazda CEO Masamichi Kogai told Automotive News when asked about a successor to the rotary-powered RX line. "If you increase the number of segments, then the resources we can allocate to each will decline and that will prevent us from developing truly good products."