Importing a car has a part nobody tells you about: the wait. Buying it takes an instant; everything else is measured in weeks, unanswered emails and photos arriving from the other side of the world. This is the story of how the FD crossed the planet to Buenos Aires, stage by stage, with photos of each one.
夢 Chapter 01 — The dream
It always starts the same way: an image burned into your brain. For some it was a movie, for others a video game; for me it was seeing one in person, just once, and realizing that no other car gets proportions like the FD's. From that day on I knew that someday I'd have one.
The problem is you don't buy an FD: you chase one. There are almost none in Argentina, and the few that exist stay in the same hands for decades. If I wanted one, I had to go find it in its homeland.
探 Chapter 02 — The search
Months of checking Japanese auctions every night, like someone checking the weather forecast. Learning to read inspection sheets, understanding what every note means, every marked rust spot, every questionable mileage. The perfect FD doesn't exist; the honest FD does.
When this one showed up, I knew in ten seconds. A '92 Mazda RX-7, black, right-hand drive, with the FEED Afflux GT3 body kit and the RE Amemiya GT Wing. And with pedigree: the sheet said it had been through the hands of Pro Shop Fukuoh (プロショップフクオウ) in Yokkaichi, Mie, a proper Japanese shop, the kind that really knows rotaries.
I placed my bid with a shaking hand. Hiro, the Shiba, stared at the screen without understanding why I was yelling alone in the living room.
Japan, May 29, 2025: inspection day.
検 Chapter 03 — The inspection
Winning the auction isn't having the car: it's having the promise of a car. What makes it real is the inspection. On May 29, 2025 the FD went through a complete check, and in about forty minutes more than two hundred photos piled up: every panel, every hose, every corner of the cabin.
The 13B-REW with the HKS GT3-4R turbo, and the red strut bar that was already part of the car.
The part that reassured me most was the least glamorous one: the paint thickness gauge. You rest the sensor on each panel and it tells you whether the paint is factory, whether it was resprayed or whether there's filler underneath. On a black car, where every imperfection shines, that number is everything.
Panel by panel, with the thickness gauge.
And then, underneath. On a car more than thirty years old, what matters isn't in the pretty photos: it's on the floor. Rust, badly repaired hits, leaks. Down there was the HKS Hypermax R suspension, exactly as the sheet said.
What you never see on a show car, but defines everything.
The dashboard, just as it was in Japan.
書 Chapter 04 — Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork
Buying it was the easy part. What followed was a marathon of red tape in two languages and three time zones: Japanese export, customs documents, insurance, coordinating with the freight forwarder. Every email meant another week of waiting.
The original manual says ɛ̃fini RX-7: that's how the FD was sold in Japan in '92.
If you're thinking about importing a car, take note: this chapter is going to grow with all the practical details, costs and real timelines. The stuff nobody tells you before you start.
港 Chapter 05 — Sayonara, Yokohama
On June 25, 2025, under a grey sky, the FD posed on Japanese soil for the last time, in Yokohama, before boarding the ship. Looking at these photos, what strikes me most is how out of place a car like this looks in an ordinary parking lot: it seems to be waiting for someone to take it to the track.
Yokohama, June 25, 2025.
The last photos before the trip.
船 Chapter 06 — The voyage
That day the FD stopped being a few photos on a sheet and became a container number. Weeks at sea while I refreshed the ship tracker as if that would make it go faster.
It's the longest and strangest part of the wait: there's nothing to do. The car is already yours, but you can't see it, touch it or hear it. Just a little dot on a map that moves every now and then.
着 Chapter 07 — Arrival in Buenos Aires
The port, customs, and that moment when you know it's inside the container. Seeing it come out into the Argentine light for the first time is something you can't describe: you feel it in your chest like a cold start.
On June 28, 2026, one year and three days after those photos in Yokohama, the FD was finally home. First contact, first turn of the key. The 13B waking up in another hemisphere, with a different accent, but with the same old brap-brap.
Home, still with the Osaka plate.
The garage was already waiting for it: the Mazdaspeed banner, the HKS one and a few old Japanese signs. The yellow one is an ad for a cream for 肩こり・腰痛・筋肉痛 (stiff shoulders, lower back pain and sore muscles), very fitting after so many months of waiting. The blue one says 交通安全: road safety.
Hood open for a first hello to the 13B, and the GT Wing doubling as a coat rack.
After traveling halfway around the world, finally still.
鍵 Chapter 08 — And now, the road
The story doesn't end with the arrival: that's where it begins. The first real outing was its first car show, and everything I do to the FD from now on will end up on the blog. This post stays as the record of the odyssey that brought it here.
Thanks for reading. And if you're on the same hunt, message me on Instagram: the rotary community is small and we have to look after it.
