12 Of The Rarest Mazdas Ever Made

Originally formed as a cork board making company in 1920, Toyo Kogyo Company branched out into making a variety of other products after a fire caused serious damage to its production facilities. In the 1930s, the company began producing three-wheel trucks, and continued to make them for several decades. 

In 1960, Toyo Kogyo unveiled its first passenger car, marketing the new vehicle under the Mazda name it had previously used for its trucks. Mazda the carmaker was born, and has since expanded from its modest beginnings into a globally renowned name. In 2024, Mazda sold 1.2 million vehicles globally.

Over the decades, Mazda has produced many iconic cars, but there have inevitably been other models that have been forgotten about by most enthusiasts. Some of those forgotten models are particularly rare to find today, either because most examples were sent to the scrapyard years ago or because very few examples were produced in the first place. These 12 are among the very rarest.

Today, Mazda makes a range of SUVs, from the entry-level CX-30 crossover to the excellent three-row CX-90. However, its first entry into the SUV world was a strange one, and little is known about it. The Pathfinder XV-1 was built specifically for the Burmese market, with production reportedly beginning in either 1972 or 1973. Burma, today known as Myanmar, was an isolated country at the time, and its automobile production was controlled entirely by the state. The Pathfinder XV-1 was made available only for military or government use, although in the decades since production began, examples have also ended up in private ownership.

Among those private owners is Walter Frey, a collector who runs a museum in Germany that specializes in rare Mazdas. Frey imported a Pathfinder XV-1 from Myanmar, then tried to contact Mazda in Japan to purchase spare parts to restore it. Mazda reportedly had no record of manufacturing the car, even though Curbside Classic reports that the Pathfinder XV-1 was originally manufactured by Mazda in Japan then shipped to Burma as a kit for final assembly in the country.

It's not even clear when the Pathfinder XV-1 stopped being produced, or how many were built in total. It's thought that production continued through the '80s, with the Burmese state gradually localizing production, although again, details aren't clear. What is known is that it's virtually impossible to find one outside of Myanmar today, aside from the example in the Frey collection in Germany.

Mazda's Engineering & Technology division usually handles projects like building vehicles for emergency service use or cars for driving schools. However, in 2003, it was tasked with building a unique version of the brand's best selling MX-5 Miata. The Roadster Coupe was handcrafted with a fixed roof and remains, to date, the only fixed-roof coupe Miata model to ever hit dealerships. Those dealerships were all in Japan, as the Roadster Coupe was built exclusively for domestic sale, and it was always intended to be a low-volume car.

The Roadster Coupe would turn out to be even more low-volume than even Mazda anticipated, as the model's significantly higher price compared to the standard Miata made it an extremely slow seller. Only 179 examples were reportedly built across all variants between October 2003 and the Roadster Coupe's discontinuation in August 2005.

In addition to the base-spec Roadster Coupe, three special variants were available: Type S, Type E, and Type A. The Type S equipped the car with a larger 1.8L engine, up from the 1.6L unit of the stock model, and churned out around 160 horsepower. The Type A was essentially a Type S with a body kit that was styled like a classic British sports car. The Type E was designed to be the most upscale variant of the Roadster Coupe, with an automatic transmission instead of a manual and a plusher interior.

The Mazda Etude was an obscure model based on the brand's popular Familia, which was known in some export markets as the 323. Its biggest selling point was the unique rear design with its large rear windshield, which Mazda reportedly referred to as a Terraceback. The Etude was introduced in 1987 and sold only in Japan for around three years. Part of the reason for its short lifespan was that it proved very unpopular with buyers, and was introduced halfway through the lifespan of the sixth-generation Familia on which it was based.

During its time on sale, the Etude faced plenty of tough competition, since it was pitched against other so-called date cars from the era like the Honda Prelude and Nissan Silvia. The Etude also shared its powertrain with the Familia, and didn't benefit from the same handling upgrades that its rivals were given. 

To complicate things further, the Etude was significantly more expensive than the standard Familia, and was around the same price as Mazda's larger sedan, the Luce — also known as the 929. Without the sleek styling or added power of an equivalent Silvia or Prelude, the Etude didn't stand much of a chance, and today it's one of Mazda's most obscure domestic market models.

Mazda's legacy is closely intertwined with that of its iconic rotary engine, with the brand first using a twin-rotor engine in the legendary Mazda Cosmo Sport of 1967. It's most famously found under the hoods of JDM icons like the RX-7, but a completely unique variant can also be found powering one of the brand's most obscure cars. The Eunos Cosmo was a short-lived model that hit Japanese dealerships in 1990, and was designed to be the "best-ever rotary-powered car" according to Mazda.

It remains the only production car to ever receive a triple-rotor engine, and boasts a number of other firsts, including being the first car sold with a built-in GPS navigation system. Not every Eunos Cosmo packed a triple-rotor engine — in fact, the majority reportedly used a standard Mazda dual-rotor unit — and since only 8,875 examples were built overall, that makes the triple-rotor Cosmo a very rare beast indeed. 

Today it's so rare that even seeing one on the road today would be shocking, since it's not known how many of the original production run have survived.

Although Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai all offer their own hydrogen-powered models in the U.S. today, they continue to be a very rare sight thanks to the limited refueling infrastructure available. All of the cars on offer today are sedans or SUVs, but back in the '00s, Mazda briefly produced a hydrogen-powered sports car. The RX-8 Hydrogen RE featured a rotary engine that could run on either hydrogen or gasoline, with the driver able to control the fuel source using a switch in the cabin.

Initially, the car was developed as a prototype only, and Mazda began testing it on public roads in 2004. The hydrogen RX-8 prototype was only one in a line of concept and prototype hydrogen Mazda vehicles, with the brand's first hydrogen rotary-powered concept, the HR-X, unveiled back in 1991. However, unlike those earlier concepts, Mazda later made a few examples of the hydrogen RX-8 available for commercial lease in Japan.

It also shipped the car to Norway for international journalists to review, with Britain's CAR Magazine remarking that, "one day, all cars will be like this." However, the same outlet also came away less than impressed with the car's power and range, calling it "a lot like an RX-8, but slower, less practical and it needs filling up twice a day." 

With no pre-existing market for hydrogen cars, Mazda had little incentive to improve the car to make it suitable for wider use, and the project was eventually shelved.

It wasn't just cars that Mazda fitted with its rotary engine. In 1974, it also launched a pickup with a Wankel rotary under the hood exclusively for the North American market. It was, rather unimaginatively, called the Rotary Engined Pick Up (REPU). 

It was designed to offer an alternative to the other small Japanese trucks that were starting to gain traction in America at the time, and was smoother and handled better than any of them. However, the rotary engine meant that it lacked the low-end torque that pickup truck owners commonly required, and it wasn't very efficient either.

It was also more expensive than its similarly sized competition, and as a result, it didn't sell well. Around 16,000 examples were built before Mazda killed off the truck in 1977. In the decades since, they've become a cult collectors' item both in the U.S. and in Japan, where a significant number of examples have been imported. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no other manufacturer has since launched a production rotary powered pickup, and it seems likely that it will stay that way.

The EV revolution is well underway, with the market share of both pure electric and hybrid vehicles rapidly increasing in America. As of this writing, Mazda does not offer a pure electric vehicle in its American lineup, having axed the MX-30 crossover after 2023. However, the company has a long history of producing EVs, building its first EV in the '70s and releasing a series of limited-run EV models in the decades since. One of the rarest is the Bongo EV, an electric version of the brand's popular Bongo van that was only made available in one region of Japan in 1998.

The Bongo EV was designed as an urban shuttle, carrying people or small cargo loads over short distances. It offered a maximum range of just 62 miles, and could carry cargo weighing up to 881 pounds with two passengers onboard. It could also be configured to seat five passengers. A regenerative braking system was fitted to maximize range, and thanks to the low-end torque available from the electric motors, the van could accelerate faster than its conventional diesel counterpart. 

The van was only sold to select Japanese companies and government agencies, and total production numbers aren't known. Mazda ended the production of its Bongo line of vans altogether in 2020 without ever producing a wider distributed electric model. However, the Bongo name lives on in Japan, with current Bongos being rebadged as Daihatsu vans.

When demand for SUVs began to increase in the early '90s, Mazda found itself caught off guard. Unlike Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Nissan, it didn't have an SUV in its lineup, and so it hastily created one from its B-Series pickup. The result was the Proceed Marvie, which was introduced in 1991. Its tough, boxy looks were a result of its truck roots, with Mazda essentially grafting a rear end onto its four-seater Cab Plus pickup and adding an extra row of seats to bring the Proceed Marvie's total capacity up to seven passengers.

Mazda sold the SUV in Japan for several years, gradually adding new variants over time. An optional automatic transmission was added in 1992, and a diesel version arrived in 1996, but it was never enough to make the Proceed Marvie popular with Japanese buyers. A new generation of the B-Series pickup was launched for international markets in 1998, but the Proceed Marvie didn't survive to see a second generation.

Debuting in 1989, the Eunos 100 was an upmarket version of the Mazda Astina, which was known as the 323F in certain export markets. It was sold at Eunos dealerships in Japan but it was unpopular with buyers throughout its time on sale. One owner even recounted in an interview with Gazoo magazine that he'd seen the Eunos 100 ranked as the slowest selling car in Japan shortly after buying one.

The car might have looked sporty, but it wasn't particularly fast. The 100 was also more expensive than the Astina but had little to show for it aside from its Eunos badging and a leather interior. Japan's bubble era was coming to an end just as the 100 was launched, although the model would stay around until 1994. 

It has since been forgotten by most fans of the Mazda brand, and parts supply for the car is reportedly dwindling for the few owners that have continued to maintain them. However, since many smaller parts are shared with other Mazda models from the era, the small community of contemporary owners remain undeterred in their quest to keep this mostly forgotten part of Mazda history from being entirely consigned to the archives.

Mazda's insistence on fitting rotary engines to all kinds of vehicles has resulted in a number of odd pairings. Few are odder than the ill-fated Roadpacer AP, which combined a 1.3L rotary engine with the body and underpinnings of the Australian-built Holden Premier sedan. The idea was that the Roadpacer AP would be an alternative to Toyota's long-running Century model and Nissan's similarly-sized President, both of which were popular as transport for government officials or high-ranking executives.

The AP in the name reportedly stood for Anti-Pollution, although this wasn't a particularly accurate moniker. The Holden Premier body that Mazda had borrowed for the Roadpacer AP was designed to house a V8 engine, and so the tiny Wankel rotary had to work hard to provide enough grunt to move it. That meant that fuel economy was greatly reduced, which entirely negated the point of fitting the rotary in the first place. 

The car was both very slow on the road and slow to sell in dealerships, with Mazda reportedly selling just 800 examples between 1975 and 1977 before discontinuing the model.

It might not be the first JDM vehicle that enthusiasts have called ahead of its time, but there's an argument to be made that the Ɛ̃fini MS-8 was exactly that. The Ɛ̃fini brand was one of several launched by Mazda at the tail end of the bubble era, alongside Eunos and Autozam. The brand was intended to be a rival to entry-level luxury vehicles from German and British manufacturers, and offered a range of models including an upmarket version of the RX-7. The MS-8 was one of two sedans in Ɛ̃fini's lineup, and the only model that was made specifically for the Ɛ̃fini brand.

Alongside its sleek, aerodynamic design, the MS-8's unique panoramic sunroof separated it from its competitors, alongside a bevy of onboard tech that included a built-in cell phone. The MS-8 was sold from 1992 to 1997 in Japan, meeting its eventual demise as Mazda ran out of cash and axed all of its superfluous brands, including Ɛ̃fini.

One of the most famously weird Mazda rotary-engined creations isn't a car or a pickup but a minibus. The Parkway 26 was the successor to a more conventional Mazda minibus, and was produced just at the peak of the brand's obsession with rotary engines. It launched in 1974 but sold so poorly that, by 1977, Mazda had admitted defeat and fitted the bus with a diesel engine. The trouble with using a rotary engine was simply the minibus' mass — it was far too large for the 13B engine to comfortably haul around, and so its efficiency was very poor.

Much like the Roadpacer AP, having an overworked engine that resulted in higher emissions defeated the point of switching to rotary power in the first place. Potential customers saw little reason to buy a minibus with such a powertrain, and over the three years or so that it was on sale, Mazda only sold 44 examples of the rotary-engined Parkway 26. 

Outside of Japan, one example is known to survive and is exhibited alongside the Pathfinder XV-1 at Walter Frey's Mazda Classic Automobile Museum in Germany.