Intro and alternatives: The purpose of a steering wheel upgrade is that a smaller wheel will offer a quicker turn because your hands don't have to move as far to turn the wheel. The stock Rx-7 steering wheel is 380 mm and most aftermarket wheels are 350 mm. Naturally another reason to upgrade is appearance. When I set out on looking for a wheel I knew I wanted something silver. This led me to the Momo Millenium, which was also the choice of my friend Chris Regan. This is a pricey wheel at over $250. I also wanted the Mazdaspeed steering wheel hub adapter but even with my extensive overseas contacts I was unable to locate one. They are discontinued worldwide. The advantage would have been turn signal return, airbag sensor disable and generally a cleaner look. If you wish to upgrade now you will need to buy the Momo adapter. I have also seen various billet adapters offered in Japan.

Anyway when I was unable to locate a Mazdaspeed adapter I got discouraged. This was just as well because I later found a little known company called Isotta and the Evoluzione Fiber. It comes in several color combinations and sells for around $150. At this point however I was already negotiating a deal on the Mazdaspeed Nardi wheel.

Finding the Nardi: Many new Mazdas are now sold with variations of the Nardi wheel you see above. It is a 370 mm wheel that bolts directly onto the steering column. This isn't as small as most aftermarket wheels but it does look nice and is much lighter than the stock wheel. It's still not as light as aftermarket wheels because it has an airbag. Most don't include the small blue Nardi symbol at the bottom and are all black. Even some of the later Rx-7s in Japan are sold with this wheel, which is what led me to believe it would fit. The spirit R wheel is particularly popular and features red stitching. Expect to pay over $500 for the spirit wheel. I didn't want all black or red stitching so I set out to find the wheel you see above, which I had seen pictured on an Rx-7 in Japan. Finding a used version was proving to be difficult and a new one from Japan was out of the question. I decided to take a chance and look for one from a Mazdaspeed Protégé. There are two basic versions with silver sides. One is from the current Protégé, which doesn't have the Nardi logo and has orange stitching. I guess this was to match the orange color paint choice. (What were they thinking?) I was willing to get this wheel so decided to price it out. Retail is about $980 and my best contacts could only bring that price down to $625. Some dealers weren't even willing to sell one at all due to the risky nature of messing with airbags. I figured that I could find better ways to spend that sort of money so it was going to be used or a no go. The problem with finding such a wheel is that few Protégé owners are willing to part with such a nice stock wheel but as luck would have it I found one such person. To increase my good fortune he was a MP3 owner, a limited production version of the Mazdaspeed Protégé that came with a very nice sound system. This wheel has silver stitching and the Nardi logo, which was what I preferred. Only 1500 MP3s were produced so duplicating this exact modification will prove to be difficult. The price I paid was pushed up to $275 due to other interested buyers that I had to out bid. This is still less than what I would have paid for a Momo with an adapter.

Installation: Although this wheel bolts directly on (which I didn't even know for sure when I bought it) there are several hurdles I had to overcome. First was the turn signal return attachment. The stock wheel has two small holes above and below the main attachment point. Two small pins sit in these holes, which spin the turn signal returns as the wheel turns. The Nardi had these holes arranged side to side so unless I wanted to snap off the plastic pins I had to drill holes in the wheel. Next was the cruise control. The Nardi wheel didn't come with cruise so I had to remove the buttons from my stock wheel and create a custom bracket made of resin to attach them. The results are satisfactory. I also considered removing my cruise altogether. Next was the airbag. Naturally I didn't have to connect it but I figured why the heck not. The problem was that the stock bag had two wires, one red and one gray. The new bag had two red wires. I contacted Jesse, who has sold spirit R wheels in the past as well as jt-imports and both told me that it didn't matter which wire I connect to which wire. I crossed my fingers and snipped the connectors from the bags and soldered the old connector onto the new bag. I should have installed new connectors because the stock connector is pretty big and didn't fit behind the bag nicely. However with a turn of the key I discovered that the airbag light was no longer blinking annoyingly indicating success. The horn was no problem. (Disclaimer: Even though two places informed me that the wiring for the bag was a non-issue there is still a 50% chance I got lucky. If you attempt to duplicate my upgrade and fail, feel free to tell me but I accept no responsibility for damages to you or your car due to a deployed airbag.)