Rob Dahm has been in the process of building and breaking his 4-rotor RX-7 for a long time now but this might be the most glorious failure of them all. In his first video for a new Top Gear YouTube series called American Tuned, the heavily modified Mazda proves to be too much of a match for some 300M hardened steel.
Of course, breaking things is sort of what Dahm does. His channel has featured this same car in various forms of completion for well over a year and that whole time he’s been slowly building it up into what could prove to be one of the most robust tuner cars ever featured on YouTube.
In this initial episode of American Tuned, he gives us a background on who he is and how this wild car has come to be in its current form. While this build hasn’t gone from start to finish very quickly, much of that slower pace comes down to the fact that Dahm has done a great deal of the work himself.
Related: This 1,200 HP 4-Rotor Mazda RX-7 FD Is A Rolling Example Of More Dollars Than Sense
An IT specialist by trade, Dahm has had to learn a great deal to get this car to this point and in this video, that point is Chuckwalla raceway for a hardcore shakedown test. He rightly points out that having such a long open stretch of road is a perfect place to road-tune the car.
Since the car has already been on a dyno, this is mostly a validation run with the added benefit of some incredible exhaust noise. As the RX-7 revs up it really does sound like a racecar and according to Dahm, the experience is almost “too overwhelming” since it’s the first time he’s experienced it at this level of intensity.
Of course, not everything goes to plan and sure enough, the day comes to an end as his rear driver’s side axle breaks off at the wheel hub. The spline itself shears off and that’s actually a good thing.
Of all the things that could’ve broken, that’s one of the easier things to fix and not one of the totally bespoke parts that Dahm has made himself. Hopefully, we can all have that attitude when the next thing breaks on our enthusiast vehicles.
A post shared by Rob Dahm (@robdahm)
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