After 25 years, her RX-7 is going home.

After getting her driver’s license at 21, Naoko Nishimoto spent the next few decades driving sensible family cars from Toyota. When she turned 55, though, the Nagasaki City resident and office worker decided that she wanted something sportier, and so she started going around to dealers and seeing what was available.

Nothing really struck her fancy, though, and so her search continued. One day, Nishimoto happened to be home and glance over at the TV while her son was watching anime. The show he was watching? None other than street racing saga Initial D, in an episode where a mountain pass battle was taking place.

“That’s it,” Nishimoto remembers thinking. There are a lot of cars in Initial D, but one in particular “looked so cool during the battles.” So she asked her son what it was, and he told her it was a Mazda RX-7.

So that’s exactly the car that Nishomoto went out and bought, and she’s now been driving it for 25 years.

Specifically, Nishomoto treated herself to a then-new silver 1999 FD (third-generation) RX-7, Mazda’s flagship sports car, powered by a rotary engine. And yes, Nishimoto, who’s now 79 years old, opted for the manual transmission, and has no trouble rowing her own gears even now.

While it was the RX-7’s looks that initially drew Nishimoto to the model (and she’s still specially smitten by the car’s rear styling), she’s also in love with the way it drives, particularly how “the road, the car, and the driver all feel like they’ve melded together” when she steps on the gas on the freeway, echoing the design goal of “horse and rider as one” that Mazda has followed with the RX-7’s sibling sports car, the Miata/Roadster.

Nishimoto’s RX-7 now has about 75,000 kilometers (46,603 miles) on the odometer, but it’s been lovingly maintained, still running well and looking good enough for her to regularly receive compliments and appreciative looks from young auto enthusiasts when stopped at traffic lights or out on the road. However, her time with the car is coming to an end. Next month she’ll turn 80, and while she currently has no difficulty driving herself, she’s decided to voluntarily turn in her driver’s license before any such issues occur. Still, it’s not going to be emotionally easy to say goodbye, as she describes her RX-7 as “an ever-present friend” and a “partner in life.”

Like a lot of people who form an attachment to a car they’ve driven for many years, Nishimoto isn’t so concerned with how much money she can get from selling her RX-7, even though the model has become rare since Mazda stopped producing it in 2002. Instead, she wants to make sure it’ll continue to be loved and cared for by its next owner. “When I let go of my car, I want to be able to say to it, ‘Be happy and healthy as you meet good people.”

With her birthday coming up, Nishimoto’s story has been attracting attention in recent months, and she’s received roughly 400 emails from interested parties who’d like to be her sports car successor. One offer stood out from the rest, though: Mazda itself would like to become the car’s custodian. The manufacturer has said it would like to restore and maintain Nishimoto’s RX-7, giving it a second life as a promotional and display model for special car-related events.

Nishimoto has happily accepted the offer, calling it “the best possible ending” to her time with the car, and hopefully some of the many people who’ll get to see it when it’s displayed will feel a spark similar to what Nishimoto did when she watching it zoom through the mountain passes in Initial D and be inspired to make their own special memories behind the wheel.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun, Nagasaki Shimbun, NBC Nagasaki Hoso, FNN Prime Online
Top image: Wikipedia/TTTNIS
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