As many of you know I have been looking forward to the acquisition of a certain TII. I now have it in my possession.
Here is the story on the car and its journey as far as I know it. The car was originally sold from the dealership as a stock 88 TII. The dealership that sold it was Lansing Motor Mall (Also known now as Crippen Motor Mall) with additional anti corrosion applied. This is the dealership that I spent some time at for Mazda parts and I purchased our 2004 Mazda 6s from the same dealership. My little brother loved my Mazda Rx-7 and I would let him drive it when he wanted. I had even tossed him the keys for it. I loved my car and loved the way it handled. Eventually my little brother joined the Michigan National Guard and was subsequently deployed to Iraq.
While he was there I talked him into getting an RX7 so that we could wrench together and hang out at some of the same rotary events etc. A couple of months before he was to come home, he found this TII for sale in the Traverse City area. It had been stored for 6 years and the owner was ready to part ways with it. He had me check out the car online for my opinion. I told him it looked good, it ran and any issues we could fix. He went ahead and purchased the car. I had to go pick it up for him.
After picking up the car, I brought it back down to my house so that I could go through it and make sure everything was working properly. It was a real nice purchase and he had gotten it for a good price. Since it was at my house, i got to drive it for a couple of months since my RX7 was still in pieces. (Would be many years before mine came together). This was a fun car to drive.
My brother also picked up another GXL that didn’t run and then sold it. He kept the extra seats that he had acquired with the other GXL and installed them into the TII to make it a 2+2 configuration. This is a unique feature, and certainly something i would not have done myself to the car. It worked for him and the two kids he had, which then became three kids. After a few years, he began driving it less. It was no longer a new shiny toy. I walked him into holding onto it a year longer, then after that year he really wanted to sell. His reasons for selling were in my opinion bogus but they were his reasons. (It cost too much to run, fix, insurance etc. when he wasn’t driving it or plating it.) I offered to buy it from him, but i could only do it through payments. He could then keep it at his house and drive it when he wanted, since i didn’t have room to properly store the car at my place.
He was not interested in selling to me. He wanted all of the cash up front and therefore ended up selling to a Middle Eastern guy in the Lansing area. The new owner had it for about a year and then sold it to another guy in metro Detroit area. This next guy owned it for about a year and decided that he had other toys he wanted to put money into. Fidelity was his friend and had just picked up his 10AE and was looking at it for a parts car. Eventually he struck a deal with his buddy and acquired the car. Prior to getting it, he offered on the forum a possible 88TII shell with 2+2 configuration.
There was only one TII with a 2+2 configuration that I knew of. After some research of who purchased and who bought it, the lineage seemed to line up. I knew I had to bring this car back into the family. KrazyKreiner had wanted it before and would have sold her vert to have it. I finally got to look at it in person. The original window sticker was still with the vehicle, the +2 seats were the same blue interior that i remembered. It was stripped of a few things. There was very little rust from being a straight Michigan car. The engine was removed, and seats exchanged with beat up 10AE seats. The drive train and brakes were still there. The bent up fender on the passenger side was replaced. Otherwise, this was the same car.
The deal was finalized and Fidelity was good enough to bring it over to my house and deliver it. My little brother's oldest son (Anthony) was present and helped with the delivery of the car to my place. He had wanted it as his first car, but it is now going to become KrazyKreiner's new toy. Anthony is also interested in wrenching on it, so I will have to have him down a few times and let him get dirty on some Rx7s. I just get to do a lot of the work for KrazyKreiner.
This is where the story of the 88 TII for us begins. Its first stop for a little while will be my back yard next to my shed until, I can source an engine and ECU for it.
