1988 Mazda RX-7 - Houston Homecoming
RE Amemiya tribute RX-7 seeks to achieve its "Final Form"
Since the age of 14, Cristian Tyrell has been fending for and finding himself. He lived back and forth between Houston, Texas, and the Portland, Oregon, and skateboarding was his constant, four-wheeled passion until a buddy he skated with pulled up to the skatepark in a modified Honda Civic. "Hell yeah! A dope skater with a dope whip! I wanna be that guy!" That was the point where just being interested in cars turned into something that was going to change the course of his life.
Done with Portland and ready to make Houston home again, Cristian bought a Kia Sephia for $300 and drove it the whole way with nothing more than a backpack stuffed with clothes and his skateboard. He settled in working at Whole Foods Market and found himself looking more in depth at cars.
Cristian picked up an '81 Toyota Corolla and started toying with it—running the streets in a car most people guessed was a Starlet or Charger. "It wasn't until I was at a gas station and this Puerto Rican guy looked at my car and said, 'Hey, nice Corolla. You know what we do in PR with those? We throw rotaries in them.' This is when I got the rotary bug."
Diving deep, he learned all he could about rotaries—known for being smooth and efficient but petrol-thirsty and lacking torque when compared to traditional piston engines. The Corolla was ditched to make way for an '88 Mazda FC RX-7 GXL, and in the one year he owned it, he learned the ins and outs of the naturally aspirated rear-wheeled liftback. Parting ways with the FC after totalling it, he was set on getting another one, but this time, the turbo model. With some luck, he found a gem in a 10th anniversary edition based on the Turbo II model.
