Join the rotary club: My Mazda RX-7 is a prettier, punchier MX-5

It’s perhaps more accurate to call this a love-hate relationship rather than one of unblinking adoration. This tenuous emotional tightrope can be attributed to the fact that in 2020 I took the bold step of buying a Mazda RX-7 – rather than the vastly safer and more sensible course of action, which would have been to gawp for a while then turn heel and run in the opposite direction.

You would have done the same in my position, though. Mazda had invited a bunch of journalists to Germany to celebrate its 100th anniversary by zipping around the Bavarian countryside in various classics and spending an evening at Automobil Museum Frey, a family-run concern with the best public collection of Mazdas outside the manufacturer’s Hiroshima home town.