FAMILIA FACES!

MAZDA TOOK A HUGE GAMBLE WITH THE ROTARY IN 1967, REWRITING CONVENTIONAL THINKING. BUT TODAY, THE BRAND EXISTS THANKS TO THIS ENGINE

- DAVE CAREY

Owning a Mazda rotary is like an addiction. Rotaholism? Mazda’s take on internal combustion doesn’t always reward owners with the greatest reliability, but its compact size, huge horsepower and unique abilities, keep people coming back. Colin Pasfield and Morris Green are textbook examples of such sufferers. They have both owned a huge cross section of Mazda’s magic micro muscle, from rail dragsters to perfect restos, and everything in-between.

Watching Colin and Morris arrive is a treat. Their machines, featured on these pages, are outstanding examples of 1970s family Mazdas, but it’s the optional rotary power that hearing them arrive, makes it something else again. Even Colin’s JDM-market Familia Presto Deluxe, which sports a stock exhaust, is simultaneously savage to the eardrums yet music to the ears.

“I purchased the car in 2012,” Colin begins after formalities are sorted. “I couldn’t find what I wanted locally, and I wanted to go through the process of importing a vehicle, so I looked to Japan.” Local Mazda R100 coupes were experiencing a bit of a price spike at the time, further cementing Colin’s decision to look overseas. “I had an ambition to collect them all: R100, RX-2, RX-3, RX-4 and RX-5 coupes,” he says. “Which, if you include the Familia, I succeeded in doing, but I’ve since sold the RX-2.”