The Story
I bought this car basically as it sits, so this isn't so much of a build thread, as it is a guideline for, what I personally believe, is one of the best ways to turn a luxury yacht into an enthusiast car. I will go into more detail about the chase for this car in a future blog post, but the short version is:
Once I realized the JC Cosmo was eligible for importation, I began to dive in and do a ton of research on the platform. As a long-time rotary enthusiast, I had a basic knowledge of the cars, but the notion of them finally being allowed to be stateside was enough to send me down the rabbit-hole to find out as much as I could. There was a ton of good information on some Aussi/New Zealand based sites which gave me a good foundation. But then I found a build thread on the RX7Club. This thread was made by an Air Force member who was stationed in Okinawa. I read everything he had written about the car up until that point, and continued to follow along with it for the next few months. I realized this was my ideal JC, and recreating the car would be virtually impossible. It had everything I could possibly want: 20B, Rare parts, track focused parts, and the most important...a manual swap.
Fast forward a year or so, and he had been stationed back in the states and brought the car with him. So when he put it up for sale, I knew if I didn't get this particular car, I would never be happy with another Cosmo. So, I made the arrangements and purchased the car. And it is everything I could have hoped for.
I think the only way to make a better JC would to be go all out and do a DCT trans, Ford rear-end, and either big port single turbo or P-Port N/A setup. I don't think my car will ever get that kind of treatment, but I'm willing to bet there will be some youtuber who does something along these lines very soon....
