Curious: who would buy a new RX7?

FairmanZ

What you have quoted is the RX-8's specs, not the last RX-7. No disrespect to RX-8 owners, but Mazda always said the RX-8 is NOT a direct RX-7 successor.

The last RX-7 was a pure sports car. The '98-'02 models, which were never sold in the US, were rated at 280 hp and Curb weight was about 2750 lbs in the sportier trims.

(But dynos in Japan had it closer to 300 hp. Recall in the '90s there was a gentlemen's agreement in Japan not to exceed 280 hp, even the GT-R was rated 280 hp.)

I owned a '93 RX-7, bought new back in the day. But I wouldn't buy the future 16x version unless the hp is more than 300 and the weight truly is kept at about a flat 2700. Otherwise, it's not any faster than the former RX-7 it replaces (and again I'm not talking about the RX-8).

Then of course there's looks. I'm not a fan of the current Mazda styling trends. In fact, I still prefer the looks of most of the '90s era cars over the styling of their current counterparts.

Looks wise:

Z32 > Z33 (But it's a close toss up between the Z32 & Z34)
RX7 > RX8
Original Miata > current one
R34 GT-R > R35 GT-R (Sorry, the new car's performance is a beast, but its looks are not for me.)
MR2 > MRS
Supra > ? well, you get the idea