Cars from the 1980s and 1990s have ascended to fascinating levels of popularity. Today, people are willing to pay frankly shocking amounts of money for cars from their childhood. If you’re not flush with cash, there are still Radwood-worthy wonder machines out there. One of them is the Mazda 323 GTX, Mazda’s first 4WD car in America and a rare turbocharged hot hatch that seemingly everyone forgot about. Now, maybe we should remember it!
One of the saddest parts about being a modern collector of anything automotive-related is finally having cash to spend, but finding out that the markets you play in have gotten exponentially more expensive. Japanese cars from the 1990s used to be first cars at my high school, now folks are paying $30,000 or more for cars like the 2000 Honda Civic Si. Did you love the Acura NSX and the Nissan Skyline R34 from your youth playing video games? Don’t even think about it unless you have a lot of money to throw around on a single vehicle. People are even spending more than $10,000 on Honda Civic Del Sols and I remember when you were able to get them for $1,000.
The good news is that it’s not all bad! Not all of the cars from the so-called Rad era are bonkers expensive. I was able to import two seriously cool cars from Japan for about $8,500 total and if you know where to look, you can get a great piece of automotive history without having to eat ramen for the next 10 years to afford it.
One of those great pieces of automotive history is a car that remains overlooked by collectors today. The Mazda 323 GTX has all of the right ingredients of a hot car from the 1980s. It started life as a compact hatch, but then Mazda tossed in a turbocharger, sport seats, a manual transmission, and oh yeah, a wicked 4WD system. Yet, only 1,243 copies were sold in the United States over two years and then it seems like most enthusiasts forgot about it and moved on.
Mazda’s Technological Leap
The 323 GTX is built on the 323 hatchback, a car sold in its home market as the Familia. By the time the GTX came around to the United States, the 323 was already on sale for a couple of years and this car was a tour de force.
Mazda says that the Familia started life as a few different vehicles. In the early 1960s, Mazda found out that its customers wanted a light passenger van with decent performance and greater comfort than a work van. In 1963, Mazda answered the call with the Familia Van, a vehicle that Mazda says was designed “to cater to family outings.” The Familia was also made into a small truck.
At the same time, the brand said it was also charting a course to change Japanese sedan history. In 1964, it launched the Familia Sedan, which the company says blended performance, style, and comfort into a form factor that Japanese buyers found addictive. Mazda says it was so hot that the car earned a 23 percent market share in just its first month and 10,000 units were sold by the end of the year.
The Familia would then proceed to go through four generations from 1963 to 1980. Each of those generations saw the Familia bear the same basic layout of an engine up front and rear wheel drive. These engines were commonly compact four-cylinder units, but this is Mazda, of course, so even the Familia got a rotary at some point in its life.
The fifth generation, which launched in 1980, would change everything. Mazda had big ambitions for the Familia. The then-new model would attract a younger, more active audience while the brand would also show off its technical skills in making a whole new car from the ground up. Mazda continues:
Although employing a front-engine front-wheel-drive (FF) configuration for the first time in the Familia Series, Mazda wanted the fifth-generation model to attain the direct shift feel of a FR car. Mazda also aimed for more incisive handling than that of the Honda Civic, plus seats as comfortable as a living room sofa. With the hatchback, Mazda focused on the growing interest in outdoor pursuits amongst the younger generation, which was the Familia’s targeted customer base. Based on the sharp ride for which the Familia had built a reputation, Mazda used the catchphrase “Sporting heart” and signed actor Kinya Kitaoji to appear in its commercials.
This strategy definitely paid off. With a power sunroof fitted as standard equipment, the “Red XG” was well received by the market. Often pictured with a surfboard mounted on the roof rack, the Familia’s angular wedge-shaped design and sporty appearance proved to be extremely popular, and earned it the nickname “land surfer.” The “Red Familia” quickly became a symbol of the age.
The fifth-generation Familia was the first to be named Japan Car of the Year, and it won many more awards in the US and Australia. In Japan, the Familia often topped the monthly sales results over such formidable rivals as the Toyota Corolla and Nissan Sunny, sometimes selling over 13,000 units per month. In 1982, only 27 months after the start of production, cumulative sales of the Familia reached one million units. The achievement set a new record, beating the Chevrolet Citation (GM), which took 29 months to reach unit sales of one million, and the VW Golf, which took 31 months.
The Toyota Automobile Museum concurs with Mazda that the fifth-generation Familia, especially one with a surfboard on its roof, became a cultural icon.
Today’s car is based on the sixth-generation Familia, which was introduced in 1985. This car would continue down the front-engine, front-drive path set by the fifth-generation model, but this time, Mazda says, the car was designed to go global.
In this mission, designers gave the vehicle bodywork with flush surfaces with additional attention to aerodynamics. Mazda also wanted to continue the trend of a front-driver with the feel of a rear-drive car, so the body was stiffened up even further to aid handling. Mazda is even proud of the cabriolet version of the sixth-generation Familia as it was Mazda’s convertible before the RX-7 Cabriolet and the MX-5 went on the market.
The sixth-generation Familia/323 was launched at a time when Japanese industry was hitting incredible strides. The nation’s motorcycle manufacturers were experimenting with fuel injection and turbochargers, Honda was experimenting with what would become the NSX, Toyota was sending out bangers like the AE86, and the famous “Bubble Era” was only a year away.
While Mazda talks up the sixth-generation 323’s rigid body and flush, contemporary design, the automaker’s engineers were obsessed with making improvements down to the car’s window switches. Today, pretty much every car uses the same formula for opening and closing power windows. You push the switch down to open the window and then pull up to close the window.
It wasn’t always this way. Many older cars with power windows use a simple rocker switch. Even the BMW E39, which was sold in the 2000s, uses rocker switches for its power windows. Mazda saw this as a problem. In its view, a child trying to stick their head out of a car window may inadvertently activate a window rocker switch with their hands or feet, trapping their heads outside by the neck. Mazda didn’t know of a single recorded instance of this happening, but it decided to fix this before it became a problem, from Mazda:
An engineer at the department in charge of automotive design who had been at the company for five years imagined over and over how such an incident would play out. Was it wrong to install the switch where a child’s foot could reach it? Was there a problem with the positional relation between the armrest and the switch? Within the department, various patterns of switch shapes and layouts were repeatedly discussed, even going as far back as considering the basic principle of what a switch was anyway? In considering different alternatives, the engineer was struck by a new idea. “A switch does not necessarily have to be something that is pressed,” he reasoned. “Would it be possible to prevent such accidents by creating a ‘pull-up’ switch?”
It was in this moment that the idea for the unconventional and innovative “pull-up” switch was born. The new design required the user to curl their finger into the depression behind the switch and drag the switch back toward them to close the window and to simply press it down to open it. This new system not only enhanced safety but also created new value by matching the up-and-down motion of the window with the action required to manipulate the switch, thereby enabling intuitive operation.
For the formal adoption of the newly invented switch system, however, careful examination was required. Great concern was expressed about the unfamiliar operation of the innovative switch, and the team had to comprehensively consider the display and appropriate layout of the switch to make it easy for the driver and other passengers to operate it. To promote the universal design of the switch, ingenuity was demonstrated in a variety of ways, including making the dent shape friendly to fingers of all different sizes and providing the surface of the switch with a non-slip finish. For the verification testing, a male employee even went as far as putting on artificial nails, which were very popular in North America at the time.
Mazda said the world’s first adoption of the pull-up window switch found its way into the 1985 Mazda Familia/323. Now, the automaker states, everyone is doing the same thing with their windows.
The Hot One
Now that we’ve established that the sixth-generation car is a bit of a technological marvel, let’s talk about the spicy one everyone forgot.
In the early 1980s, Mazda began to ramp up efforts to compete in the World Rally Championship. Its Group A entry would be the 323 4WD Turbo, a sixth-generation 323 with full-time four-wheel-drive, a stiffened body, a wide stance, and a turbocharger. Of course, running this car meant that Mazda had to sell a roadgoing version of the racecar to satisfy FIA Group A homologation rules. Enter the Mazda 323 GTX.
Like many homologation specials, the 323 GTX gets fun really quickly. Mazda started under the hood, there a 1.6-liter four gets a snail with an intercooler. That nets you 132 HP and 136 lb-ft of torque, good for a 60 mph sprint in 8.7 seconds. That wouldn’t be a ton of power today, but this was a car weighing in at around 2,640 pounds, so it’s still pretty peppy. Autoweek notes that the GTX was quicker than an equivalent Volkswagen Golf GTI of the day.
It’s also notable that the street-legal GTX was down 120 horses from its racing counterpart. But as Hagerty reports, GTX owners have found it easy to add 50 HP or more just by doing an ECU tune and cranking up the boost.
The engine isn’t where Mazda spent all of its time, either. The 323 GTX also got the full-time four-wheel-drive system with a standard lockable planetary center differential, giving an even 50:50 split between the axles. Mazda then added a five-speed manual, widened the track, installed a rugged suspension, and stiffened the body. Thus, a 323 GTX ended up meaner than a standard 323 from top to bottom.
Inside, you got to sit in Recaro buckets, enjoy a digital instrument panel, and the 323’s full set of power accessories were available to you. Like many homologation specials, the 323 GTX was a flagship and showcase of what Mazda could do. The company even says that when the 323 GTX made its Japanese debut in 1985, it was the first 4WD of its kind in the nation. Technically, the Subaru Justy came sooner than the GTX and the Subaru Leone Wagon came years before, so we’re not entirely sure what qualifiers Mazda is using to say it was first.
What is true is that when the GTX landed on American shores in 1988, it was Mazda’s first 4WD car in America. Car and Driver recommended the GTX as the car to buy if you couldn’t afford an Audi 5000. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a flop. Some sources say it was because of price. The 323 GTX was $12,749, but a Volkswagen GTI was $12,725, so that couldn’t have been the only reason. Maybe Mazda didn’t make the car known enough.
Whatever the reason, only 1,243 examples were sold in America before sales ended after the 1989 model year. It’s said that some of these cars were tuned to within an inch of their lives, so who knows how many even remain. That’s not even mentioning the rust that commonly took out Japanese cars back then.
I found just a few 323 GTXs currently for sale. Two of them are rough project cars and one runs, but has high miles. It looks like if you find one, you’ll pay under $10,000 to get it, which is great!
The 1980s were a wild era in the Japanese car industry where it seemed like anything is possible. Some of today’s beloved JDM cars come from the era, but then we have forgotten rides like the Mazda 323 GTX. If the Nissans and Hondas of your childhood seem too played out or too expensive, maybe try looking for one of these. A 4WD Mazda hatch from the ’80s sounds like a total ball of fun.
Hat tip to Tom S!
Sold as a Ford in Australia
no one could understand how they got as much power out of a small 4 cyl as the double the size straight six in the falcon…
I think you could call this car a holy grail given the low production numbers and the fact that so few exist today.
Parts for this are probably in the Holy Grail category too. It might be the reason the two project cars are for sale.
I tried to find one in the late ’90s, but the ones that weren’t throughly rotted were far too much money for what was fairly slow, had a weak transmission, and lots of lag. The weak transmission seemed like a major issue, too, seeing as it had pretty low power in the first place and IDK what stronger option would have swapped in there, certainly without costing more time and money than it would be worth.
I wonder if that production number is wrong as, while they weren’t common, they weren’t that rare in the days (weeks?) before rust started taking them out. I wonder if it’s like the absurdly low production (and anecdotally obviously very wrong) numbers usually quoted for turbo Legacys of the same era. They made almost 4k Alfa Romeo Montreals, for example, and they likely had a lower attrition rate, yet I can’t recall ever seeing one outside of a concours/car show lawn or a museum, even when they were really cheap.
“…A child trying to stick their head out of a car window may inadvertently activate a window rocker switch with their hands or feet, trapping their heads outside by the neck. Mazda didn’t know of a single recorded instance of this happening, but it decided to fix this before it became a problem.”
Mazda engineer, clearly uncomfortable: “Hey fellas, any of your kids accidentally trap their head in a closing window? I feel like we should fix that. Asking for a friend lol.”
In the mid-90’s, before the pull up window switch was widely adopted, I had my friend’s large dog Keystone jump on my lap and stick his head out the window in the back of a 5th gen Cutlass supreme. One of his paws hit the window up rocker switch and the window almost crushed his head before the driver noticed what was going on and rolled the window down
Not remembered for being great because it wasn’t for all the reasons below. Was a car you wanted to like, a Japanese Lancia-ish rally car maybe ?, nope, it wasn’t.
I really like the GTX but as I understand it, the center diff (and maybe front/rear diffs too?) is practically made of glass. I think if Mazda would have made them a bit more robust, it’s entirely possible we’d be drooling over GTXs like we do old WRXs and the like.
It’s remarkable, looking back, at how much more expensive the imports were compared domestic cars during the 80’s, and yet they still reaped huge gains in market share. In 1988 you could get an IROC-Z for the same price as that 323 GTX, and that’s just a lot more car.
The fact that they could move any at all for that price is a testament to the quality and reliability gap (real and/or perceived) of the imports versus domestic cars at that time. The domestics had spent the previous ~15 years building garbage product and pissing off their customers, which opened the door for the competition. Hopefully they teach that in the ‘what not to do if you want to stay in business’ chapter of business school…
Given the behavior of the MBA dudebros of average IQ making 7+ figures a year who got their jobs because of familial connections, probably not.
Lets say there’s an excellent, high-quality but simple, no-bullshit, low-price product on the market that is selling well. Customers are happy with the product and it has a loyal following. The company making this product gets bought out by a hedge fund.
The typical strategy under the new ownership is to cut quality, add features/failure points no one asked for, then use it to “justify” a much higher price to pad profit margins more. You get a more expensive product laden with feature creep that doesn’t last as long and/or is not economically repairable, and because of the added bells and whistles, the official CPI claims no price increase occurred for that product even though it’s become less affordable to working people. The end user gets less actual real-world value per dollar of their money spent, while the dudebros maximize the gains on the next quarterly report, then bounce before the fallout of the decisions manifests and drags down the company, forcing layoffs to keep the investors happy while the customers look elsewhere.
THAT is the typical strategy and series of events that plays out in the real world.
God damn you nailed it. MBAs are the worst. It’s so fucking annoying when they add MBA to their email signature or linkedin page as if they’re a doctor or lawyer. To me it’s a warning, not something that makes their statements worth more.
If I ever get into hiring of people, any applicant with an MBA will be immediately disqualified.
They LOVE it when you teach them new jargon to use. Words they don’t understand the meaning of that they can repeat and overuse in their new press releases.
Corporate America is such a damned joke. Literal clowns pulled out of a travelling carnival would do a better job, IMO.
Cars like this were always just out of my budget. They didn’t seem like a good value. You might’ve been able to get two decent use IROC for the price of one of these.
Google William H Deming
The push/pull window buttons prevented many child strangulations – because the children stood on the switch and fell out the window.
Had 2 Mercury Tracers. 2 doors. One Standard, one Auto. Unkillable. Best cars I ever drove for thrift. Dirt cheap to fix.
About ten years ago if you attended a rallycross event you would always find at least one or two 323 GTX’s in the running. I cant imagine most of them survived though based on Mazda’s use of rust attracting sheet metal.
This is the *only* car I ever regret selling. I had a ’88 that I bought for next to nothing b/c the Honda dealership didn’t know what they had.
Drove that car from Boston to (eventually) NorCal with a stop in Colorado for a bit and it was the BEST car I ever had. Could scandi-flick it with ease and there was plenty of room for cycling gear with roof racks.
I’ve been lurking for a decent one for a project and now…I have competition.
Booo.
Great article! I didn’t forget them, mostly because I sold cars at a Mazda dealership back then and sold both of the ones we were allocated. They were terrific to drive, and hard to sell for RX-7 money, especially seeing as the RX-7s were right there, too.
Now if you really want to talk about forgotten cars, consider the 323 GT, which was a four-door, fwd sedan sold alongside these. It had the same 16v turbo, and torque steer for days, and I think it only came in a black metal-flake finish.
Then there were the 323 LX sedans with power windows, sunroofs, and plusher interiors that were also not exactly flying off the lot…
In college, my neighbor had one of those 323GT sedans that he had BUILT. He worked at a local Super Shop (remember those), and I think every paycheck went into that car. I learned what a turbo timer was and what it did from that guy!
My brother had a red 323 gtx when I was about 14, it was the first car I experienced driving sideways in on gravel.
I had an acquaintance with a 323 GTX back in the 90s. It was a hoot to drive, but mostly because the turbo lag was like riding a rollercoaster – you put your foot down and nothing really happened but a bunch of noise, but then boost hit and you had to hold on and giggle. I never really appreciated the car back then like I did the Eclipse/Talon/Laser, especially since I drove V8 muscle cars at the time, but in hindsight I should have tried to buy that 323 GTX when the owner was ready to move on to something else. Oh well.
I just had to register a username so I could pipe in on this. I bought a new one of these in ’89. A black one. I read the AutoWeek article and started calling around to dealers in the area. I found one about an hour away that had been sitting for a while since the brakes were rusty. It had 5K miles on it, so one of the managers used it for sure. The dealership was called Ralph’s, so my friends dubbed it Ralph the Wondercar. It was my first new car. The dealer experience was as you would imagine.
I paid 14K I think. It was a great car, but most turbos back then had substantial lag, as the GTX did. I was heavily involved with the SCCA in the New England Region as a flagger. Ralph went autocrossing and did OK, but turbo lag and gearing made it less than ideal. It went road rallying, where it shined. I put a pair of KC Highlites on the front and did many New England dirt road rallies. It loved that. It also carried me to all the road races that I worked at. It also went ice racing several times (time trials, really) and was super fun. Third gear, full throttle, sideways around the course. The speedo was showing probably twice the ground speed. It had skid plates of some sort, so when it went up a snow bank backwards it was an easy push back down.
It blew the turbo once on the highway and made a very impressive steam trail behind me. Warrantee fixed that.
One very snowy Thanksgiving it also transported 5 of us to dinner some 50 miles away. The roads were clogged with stuck cars, but traction didn’t bother us, even with OEM tires. My poor father kept grabbing the dash in fear, but the GTX never came close to skidding.
The digital dash was interesting but not necessarily a bonus. We did try to keep the boost gauge lit up to entertain passengers, but that gauge was otherwise useless. It had a push button central diff lock that would sometimes get pushed by accident and cause really bad low speed cornering on dry pavement.
When I talked to “real” rally drivers, who did high speed stuff, not the Time/Speed/Distance ones, they told me the transmissions were not up to the task of a chipped engine. When I tried to sell the car some 4 years later (so I could go road racing) the rally crowd gave it a “meh”.
The car didn’t have long highway legs, since the power was way up high. 70 MPH might have been at around 3K RPM, if I recall. We were still in the 55MPH national speed limit, so there’s that.
On the whole, a great little rally car. With the power so peaky, it wasn’t the funnest daily driver in traffic. You did need to slip the clutch to get anywhere off a stop light or you would just accept acceleration closer to a true economy box.
I sold it eventually to a friend who also rallied it. He got the car for a bargain, and I spent the proceeds on a tow vehicle, trailer, and a Honda Civic S hatchback for ITC racing.
I liked it but I don’t pine for it.
And I was the second owner of Ralph the Wondercar. As Andy, er, I mean, Rust Collector said, it was a bargain. I had a lot of fun with it, competing in TSD rallies and autocrosses, and bashing through the woods late at night. I even took it drag racing!
The clutch was indestructible, allowing high-RPM launches into the tiniest holes in traffic. My only embarrassment in the car came when I forgot to unlock the center diff before doing a handbrake turn. All four wheels locked up and the car went straight. Oops.
I put many miles on it before selling it a few years later. Unfortunately, Ralph was stolen from its third owner after just two months, and the car was never seen again.
Ahh! Stolen!? How awful. So, it “died” before it got old, like ’60’s rock stars. Forever young, preserved in our memories. It was about to cost the 3rd owner a bunch of money, I’m guessing, starting with the 4 axles and drive shaft and possibly a transmission rebuild.
Steve, your guess at my ID is correct. I hope all is well with you and yours.
I liked the way you mounted the switch for the KC lites – you moved it to the right side stalk so you didn’t need to move your hands off the wheel. That was cool.
I really wanted one of these when they were new. I was a rally fan and loved my Rabbit that I had at the time. I ended up with a 1991 AWD Subaru Justy I bought new for less than $9000.
My second car was the fifth-gen Familia, a 1981 Mazda GLC. Green, four door, crank sunroof, 5-speed. It was underpowered, but a well put together, comfortable car.
As I was a stupid teenager, I kept it only a year and traded it in on the dumbest vehicle purchase I’ve ever made.
Fast forward a few years into my 20s, and I managed to acquire a 1988 Mazda 323 GTX. I had the Car and Driver issue with this car review, and acted immediately (and financially irrationally) to buy it when I saw one for sale.
Probably the most fun car I had. Turbo lag, but that sweet whine. Feeling invincible on a back road or in the snow. Another crank sunroof to amplify the experience.
There was a bit of rust already when I got it, but that didn’t kill it while in my possession. It unfortunately was a camshaft lobe that broke (according to my mechanic), and I didn’t have the funds to get a new one. I had him weld the lobe back on and immediately sold the car to a Mazda dealer.
The next car was a pristine 1985 Toyota Celica GT-S, with the cool marker lights, but that’s a story for Jason’s article.
I just made a similar comment about the turbo lag, but you are spot on about feeling like a rally hero on back roads. My friend and I didn’t live where we got snow, but there were plenty of dirt roads around to drift about on. If you timed it just right, you could get the boost to hit mid-turn and get four-wheel power oversteer to carry you through the turn like Colin McCrae.
Don’t know the specifics of Subaru’s of the day, but maybe this was the first transvers, FWD-based AWD system? I know modern Subarus have the engines mounted longitudinally.
Edit: That’s probably not it. I just realized Audi probably did that earlier.
That might be it – Audi famously mounted most of their engines longitudinally for years even on the FWD stuff, which meant a bunch of weight past the front axle.
They all rusted to death LOL
Tell me more about this – I’ve seen the Mazda + rust thing come up a bunch here in the last few days, but I confess to not really knowing much before that.
Anecdotal, but my wife had a 2003 Mazda Protege that she bought new in early 2004. By 2011 it was so rusty that it had paint bubbling all over, holes in every body panel, and was totaled when someone ran a red light at 20mph and hit the front passenger tire and the whole shell buckled (there were wrinkles in the rear driver’s fender and roof and none of the doors opened/closed properly). The 2004 Explorer my wife inherited from me when the Mazda was totaled, which had spent its entire life in the same upper Midwest winters, only had surface rust on the exhaust and suspension components.
I live in New England and owned a 2004 Mazda3, a 2006 Mazda3, and a 2010 Mazda3. All three succumbed to terminal undercarriage rust on the chassis and suspension components after 150K miles.
Yeah, exactly. Every 90s and early 2000s mazda you see in new england is covered in holes, and that’s only the ones that have survived this long. The rest have long since returned to dust. My friend had a fender bender in his mazda3 (first gen, I think?) a few years ago and it just fell apart.
I remember seeing first gen Mazda3’s with terminal wheel arch rust by like 2008,when they were still a late-model car (and Protege5’s were even worse), but it seems like they got the issues mostly in check by 2010ish (around the split from Ford). Certainly, my 2 was holding up fine when I got rid of it at almost 10 years old.
Ever wonder why an NA or NB Miata engine can be reliably boosted to 300hp or more? They took the turbo engine for the 323 GTX from the parts bin and put it in the two seater sideways.
I remember these being on the market, but had no idea the production numbers were that low.
The first new car that I bought new (first of 3) was a 1988 Mazda 323. Think I paid around 7k for it.
4-speed, crank windows, vinyl seats and no radio/speakers.
It came with 2 options: A/C (a must have in the South) and pin stripes (that I did not want).
Drove that car like the stupid teenager that I was.
Dreamed and lusted after a 323 GTX, but much too poor at the time.
Got some bigger wheels from a Mercury Tracer, slapped on some Pirelli P77’s, installed a Kenwood deck with speakers and I was living my best life.
Traded it in for my second new car, a 1991 Honda CRX DX.
Still miss both those cars.
About 6-7 years ago when I was car hunting, one if these popped up in a small town here in OK. It ran, drove and was supposedly rust free, all for under $4k!!
I wanted to go look at it, but talked myself out of it. I figured it was so rare, getting parts would be tricky, and I needed a dependable daily driver.
I bought a Trans Am WS6 instead.
My man I approve of your choice (no bias there or anything haha)
But the Grail Spec wasn’t sold here, the 323 GT-Ae