Mazda RX-7 FB

The first RX-7 was Mazda doubling down on the engine everyone else had given up on. While rivals fled the rotary after the 1970s fuel crisis, Mazda built a whole lightweight sports car around it and launched the RX-7 in 1978. The shape, with its long hood, pop-up headlights, and curved rear glass, drew clear inspiration from the Lotus Elan, and underneath sat the 12A, a tiny twin-rotor Wankel spinning out around 100 horsepower in US trim.

That figure sounds feeble until you account for the weight, or rather the lack of it. At roughly 2,300 pounds with near-perfect balance, the FB darted through corners in a way its modest output never suggested, and the rotary's smooth, high-revving thrum gave it a character no four-cylinder could touch. America fell hard for it and bought the lion's share of the nearly half a million built. Later cars sweetened the recipe, with a fuel-injected 13B in the US GSL-SE and even a turbocharged 12A in Japan.

This is the affordable, charming, slightly fragile starting point of the RX-7 story. Rust and the rotary's appetite for fastidious care have thinned the survivors, so condition is everything and a compression test is non-negotiable. Find a clean one and you have a featherweight 1980s sports car with real racing pedigree and an engine note like nothing else on the road.