THE '70S LOVE CHILD OF MAZDA & HOLDEN
The Mazda RoadPAcer: 1975 – 1977
The mazda Roadpacer: 1975 – 1977
The Mazda RoadPAcer: 1975 – 1977
Today, Mazda’s Roadpacer is viewed as a curiosity; a languid lump of banal mixed with a healthy heap of high-revving Dorito-powered insanity. Yet in 1975, Mazda’s plan all made sense on paper.
For the uninitiated, the Mazda Roadpacer, of which precisely 800 were built from 1975 to 1977, is a HJ/HX-series Holden Premier with a 13B Wankel rotary engine under the bonnet somewhere.
Why does it exist? Well, when your bank is backing Toyo Kogyo – aka Mazda – you don’t want to get picked up at HIJ international in a Nissan President or Toyota Century.
The President and Century were ‘Number 3’ cars, their size and displacement putting them in the luxury car tax bracket and requiring a ‘3’ on their rego plates. Mazda desperately wanted a ‘3’ but only produced light trucks and compact cars; mere ‘4s’ and ‘5s’. Bizarrely, it was Isuzu – who had been selling the HQ Statesman in Japan – that brokered the deal between Mazda and GM Detroit, via trading house C Itoh & Co.
Depending on your source, GM-H either exported partially built-up shells – as described in several publications, and mentioned anecdotally by former Holden stylist Leo Pruneau, former Mazda executive Bob Hall and former Mazda engineer Takao Kijima – or exported CKD kits for Mazda to assemble from scratch, which is possible, although ignores the diminutive size of Mazda’s passenger car assembly lines.
However it was built, Mazda insisted its luxury car use Mazda power, so in went their mightiest engine, the 13B. Rotary enthusiasts can perhaps mark 1975 as peak Dorito; Mazda’s Tokyo Motor Show brochure illustrates rotary options for the Grand Familia (808), Savannah (also 808), Capella, Luce (929) and the ‘all-new’ Roadpacer AP. Most proudly include their quarter mile time among the specs. The Roadpacer, tellingly, does not.
The Roadpacer took five years to sell three years’ production but ultimately, it did what Mazda required; rock up to HIJ with a ‘3’ on the plate. Only 799 were actually sold, with Holden getting one as a freebie for testing. Which they did. Then crushed.
That’s harder to answer than you’d think. No official register exists, but years of forum discussions, owner sightings and rotary folklore suggest there are at least two Roadpacers in Australia, both believed to have arrived sometime over the past two decades.
Japan tells a different story. A handful of abandoned examples remain hidden away, quietly deteriorating after years of neglect. The car pictured above is one of them. Click here to watch WasabiCar uncover one of Mazda’s strangest creations.
When something as peculiar as the Roadpacer exists, it was only a matter of time before someone wondered what Mazda should have built in the first place.
Enter Low Standards’ Jay and rotary legend Rob Dahm. Starting with an old HQ race car rather than a genuine Roadpacer, the pair binned the trusty red six and replaced it with a screaming three-rotor. It’s less a faithful tribute than a reimagining; the Roadpacer, if Mazda had traded compromise for outright madness. Click here to watch the build.