+John Techwriter I bought one of these for $300 when I was 16 (In 1999)... out of a scrapyard. Swapped an alternator from another 323 onto it, and drove it home, not really knowing what I had purchased but I thought it looked cool and had nice seats. Was I ever pleasantly surprised... what a blast to drive, even in stock form with over 300,000 km on the clock!

I had a 1991 323gtx... I miss it too...🙄😏

U win

@@crashbandi53 u win more

Ford sold plenty of them. Mazda today is pretty bland though.

@@halohunter5217 you have it completely backwards my friend

It's not the 90's any more

@@lukerinderknecht2982 Mazda is back baby! New Mazda 3 Turbooooo! And the interior... omg. But the red paint... wow

@@fread51 Always so many Mazda fans in the comments, yet this company is seeking $4 billion in loans. Same with Mitsubishi fans in comments. Their dealers are empty of foot traffic and they are on life support.

Different times new ideas seem off lol

Analog gauges should have disappeared from all cars at least 35 years ago.

The similarly sized 1.5 and 2.5 would throw me off, but the general design of the dash looks nice for its purposes.

@@tedschmitt178 Personally I love both. Though analog looks SLIGHTLY better in SOME cars. My fear is what it'll cost to Fix a digital display. I heard nightmares about it from mechanics AND car owners.🧐😕

It's probably because we are looking at it in modern days. The nostalgia undoubtedly adds quite a lot of extra points. I'd be very happy to have that digital gauge if I owned a GTX. But I think the car itself is hard to find, not to mention that digital cluster.

my favorites are the tape cd combo units of the early 2000's

Harassed or molested?!? LOL!!!😁😆😅

+Eric Shea b6 and b8 were killer blocks but fyi they made non turbo version prior to that they but bigger cams in the non turbos

+dfissell Good to know, as it seems that there are multiple variants (SOHC, DOHC, 8 v, 16 v) of the B6 that go back to 1985. But for clarification I was referring to the fact that the DOHC 1.6 L B6ZE used in the 1990 Miata included a few remnants that were also found in the turbocharged DOHC 1.6 B6T, (which was introduced in 1985), such as the cooling oil spray found at the bottom of the pistons.

+Eric Shea Refresh my memory, was the fwd 323GT sedan turbo or NA?

nlpnt The 323GT had the turbo, but was even rarer than the GTX.

Don't forget it was put in the Capri too. Though nowhere as fun as the GTX.

+bandi53 Yeah, and with handling STILL not as fun as the Mazdas was at the time! Remember folks, it's largely about the AWD torque split.

There was a Rallye Golf built in the late 80's that never made it to the U.S. market for street driving, but did make it to competition. There were only 5,000 Rallye Golfs built and sold, they are now very rare cars. There were no 3rd generation Golfs with all wheel drive until the R32 (4th generation).

@@snowrocket Not at all, the VW Golf GTI was the best handling hatch in the 80's and early 90's. It was the benchmark for all hatchbacks at the time.

@@x-man4702 My comment was about the handling of the AWD Golfs, not the class-leading FWD Golfs. The AWD Golfs were not considered, for the price and performance, to have the more neutral handling sometime associated with good AWD cars like the 323GTX and the Lancer Evo.

@@snowrocket The Lancer Evo was not produced until 1992, that's years later after the GTX and the Rallye Golf were built and raced. The GTX did have a "better" AWD system than the Rallye Golf, but it was significally underpowered compared to the competition. The Rallye Golf was no better, even though it had an additional 26 bhp over the GTX.

Danny Carlin-Weber do you still have it, see my profile pic it's a 323 sedan

Denver Cayle Ong Oh no, unfortunately. My dad put about 330,000 miles on it before it died on him. I think that was in 1999 or 2000. Love the car!

....only 330.000 miles?!? Anything broken under 500.000 miles for that particular model is because of abuse and neglect. My dad had one, (1.5 engine) 900.000 miles today under the third owner.

first i had a gtx... now i have an sti... i do still have my 323 gt though (fwd counter part to the gtx)

I like to see your 323 kenneth. Do you have a vid?

I've looked at five over the years; all of them were rotted to shit. NY is not kind to these cars... :(

I had one for about 3 years :)

Evo*

was the gearbox bad even on the GTR?

I think in Nebraska our highway speed limits didn't raise until the early 90's.

Soca Nick it is reliable?

Still have it?

Most don't even know about the 323 GT, 4 Doors, same 1.6 Turbo Front wheel drive and available with a digital dash.... Great car !!

@@trekinseattle super cool little car! I loved mine. The awd hatches were prone to synchros going in the trans. Mine was beaten up but held up nicely. Just head gaskets were my only issue

Then along came Subaru.

@@jamesbonomy42 My brother [above] replaced it with a more family-friendly Escort wagon (albeit the uncommon 5-speed manual version).

Quite a few in nz

I'm surprised, too! I have a 1991 Escort Pony 3 door based on this car with a 1.9 and 4 speed auto overdrive. Though I drove like a madman, I consistently got no worse than 25 m.p.g.

The extra weight of the Awd system and being a turbo probably really hurt the mpgs. I'm surprised this sport version had such tall gearing, maybe for improved mpg on the highway. My 88 Tracer had a very aggressive 3.86 final drive ratio. It made for very fun acceleration, but you had to keep the speed down on the highway or the mpgs would plummet

@@BrownBomber92181 The AWD hardware! Duh. Of course! And I know for a fact that fuel economy drops; as one expert put it, exponentially; over 60 m.p.h. At least with 4 speed automatics it does. I don't know about todays' 6 and 8 speed automatics.🧐

You should see the ones in the Ford T-Bird/Mercury Cougar and Chrysler's extended K-car platform luxury cars!!!!!

We also had the Mazdas, I still have one in perfect condition I purchased new in 89. The Ford Lasers were copies built on the same design but nowhere close in quality! ;)

I'm daily driving an 89 Sydney assembled Ford Laser sedan in 2021. Bought in 2010 with only 115K kilometres. Just reached 190K and still running like a clock. It has EFI 1.6 8v B6f engine with the four speed overdrive auto. Managed to achieve 6.7l/100km with 80% freeway driving by not exceeding 100km/h and sitting (safely!) behind trucks to cut wind resistance. Best I've achieved with this car.

Chris S As a GTV6 owner , I concur 👍

OMG!!!!! You sold a First Gen. Taurus SHO?!?!? Dude!!! You're gonna Hate me. According to last June's Motor Trend "Back to the 90's" edition, First and Second Gen. Taurus SHO's in excellent condition are going for...Sit Down Now...$20,000.00 American!!😎😎

Yes me too, I love all those digi-dashes from the 80's and early 90's. Much more character then todays boring Lcd/Oled screens.

Yeah I agree a gd driver should get this car to maybee 15.9 16 second quarter mile my 1983 ford Telstar 2.0 non turbo lol carb not injected only mods were exhaust and extractors and a reasonable driver 16.1 quarter mile so this 4wd shd be quicker than this

Absolutely right. My first car was an 88 Tracer 3 door hatchback. When I sold it it had 160k miles, and they were a lot of hard miles. When my dad had the car, he drove the shit out of it and rarely services it. I got it with 125k miles and I checked the oil and it didn't even register, and the oil pan was only a 3.5 qt pan!!! You're right about synthetic oil being too slick, I changed the oil and put in synthetic the first time and it sounded like marbles were in the engine, lol. I immediately dumped it and put in conventional oil

@@BrownBomber92181 WOW!! I've Never heard of using conventional over synthetic oil.🧐

+olskoolnewpaint subaru wrx sti and mitsubishi evolution?

Back in '89...

+olskoolnewpaint I think You could buy a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX back then and get an AWD Turbo car.

+Skyline Fever, the 1st gen (or would've gone to the Jeep dealer to get the similar Eagle Talon TSi w/either (~195hp T-2.0L) FWD or AWD) ). Also a couple of steps more expensive (the base Eclipse and Talon were in the GTX's price neighborhood) than the GTX.

dwilsonjr78 yes the version with a strong engine,but the city version engine is easy to find in my country

LOL. I'm like, "What the hell is he talking about!?!?!"!

Did the "boy racers" tear 'em up?? I hear this is why you shouldn't buy a used Charger/Challenger with Any v8 because They've been drifted into the ground!

Dealers Always low-ball you.

I'm on to my second 323 bf now ;)

Don't rag it out. Get KONIs because the front end is a bit heavy in turns.

+inferno66750 Same here.... less than 1200 were in the US back in the day.

cad5359 I had the 1991 escort GT awesome car, wonder how much better in could have been with a turbo engine?

Eric Henry I want to see lol

cad5359 interesting That the 0-60 for this with a turbo is the same as the 1991 Escort GT non turbo

Nope

Escort GT is bigger, it's a different generation altogether.

Yes. You missed the 80's.

12k in 1989 is about 24k today. No idea if that included the turbo/awd system. The fully loaded was 15k or $30,000 in today's money.

@@richr161 ooh I see 😶

People had higher wages then too, you can't go by price alone.

What insurance and did they cough it up?!?

fwd is still fun if you stick to the Rhode, I had a hatch with konis and a k&n that's all I needed. it was pretty fun on twisties but it was no drag car tho.

+Boyd W You're correct about the GT AND it was only offered as a four door sedan. The WORST part of the GTX was the low torque capacity of the AWD tranny. ALL of the rally people as well as many street driven ones had to fix the tranny. Many of the parts of the GTX were unique to the car and were expensive. Still, so far, it has been Mazda's most fun AWD to date.

Boyd W what you get for that is quality, I bought my wife a 99 Mitsubishi galant, she's owned that car for 2 years and every year I have to over haul the rear suspension and send it to be aligned, about same time I bought my 323, and I haven't messed with the suspension(except struts) keep in mind about 7 months ago I bought a set of 17 inch wheels riding on 225 on the front and 235's on the rear and I honestly thought it was going to be too much for the suspension, it has been a while and still no suspension issues, that's the difference quality, Mitsubishi is hard to find good replacement of parts beck all they sell at the local parts store is Chinese piece of crap , and let's talk expensive, to overhaul the rear suspension on my wife's car comes at around 130$ , my Mazda is 150 and it lasts so much for longer, I'm not going to complain about 20 extra dollars

Somebody at Mazda needs to turn up the marketing for the past 40 years now. To survive as a car company, you need to SELL.

The 98-02 ZX2 was 130hp as well. Getting away from carburetion and primitive smog reduction really started opening doors for performance. VCT/VVT helped, as well as more CNC/computer controlled manufacturing techniques.

@@RockandrollNegro I had a ZX2 also...Thanks 4 the info. :):)