Market Find: A 1970 Mazda Cosmo Sport With Its Original 10A Rotary, Listed by JDM Legends
Only 1,176 Cosmo Sports were ever built, and this Series II car — restored in Japan and now titled in Utah — still has the twin-rotor engine it left the factory with. It's listed at $125,000.
Every rotary Mazda built since 1967 — every RX-7, every RX-8, the FD's twin-turbo 13B, the works Le Mans-winning 787B — traces back to one car. This is that car, or as close as most enthusiasts will ever get to seeing one in person: a 1970 Cosmo Sport Series II, currently listed by California-based dealer JDM Legends at $125,000.
Mazda built the Cosmo in two runs: 343 first-generation L10A cars, then 833 Series II L10B cars like this one, for a total of 1,176 before production ended — a number small enough that surviving examples are genuinely rare regardless of condition. The Series II, introduced in mid-1968, is the more usable of the two: a stronger version of Mazda's 10A twin-rotor engine good for 128 hp, a 5-speed manual in place of the original 4-speed, power brakes, and 15-inch wheels on a slightly widened chassis.
What makes this particular car notable is what it doesn't have: a replacement engine. According to JDM Legends, the car retains its original 10A rotary, restored in Japan in the mid-2000s before being sourced and inspected by the dealer and brought to the US, where it now carries a Utah title. Beyond a Nardi steering wheel, the listing describes the car as remarkably original — down to the houndstooth-and-vinyl interior and the factory gauge cluster, both still in place. The dealer's own comparison points to just how uncommon that is: even Jay Leno's well-documented Cosmo, they note, runs a later engine rather than the original 10A.
Values for good Cosmo Sports have moved a long way from where they sat even a decade ago — JDM Legends points to a recent auction sale at $260,000 as a data point for where the top of the market now sits, though that figure reflects a single result rather than an established price floor. At $125,000, this car is positioned well under that ceiling, for a genuinely rare, largely original example of the car that convinced Mazda to spend the next fifty-plus years building rotary engines nobody asked for and everybody, eventually, fell in love with.