The Mazda RX-7 revival is a delicate topic. From what we’ve seen from 2016 onwards, the Japanese brand seems confused, with some of its staff quietly rooting for such a sports car to happen and others adopting more reluctant stances regarding a potential model that would slot above the nimble MX-5.

In the meantime, the Internet’s pixel manipulators are hard at work, coming up with renderings that depict what a modern RX-7 interpretation (call it an RX-9, if you please) would look like when dressed up with Mazda’s current styling cues.

Remember, this is not an official design study concocted by Mazda, but the creation of Enoch Gabriel Gonzales, an industrial designer based in Quezon City, Philippines, who was kind enough to post his work on Behance.

You can’t have one without the other, end of story. But going down that road comes with a hefty set of implications.

For starters, Mazda would have to sort out emission regulations, fuel efficiency, and, of course, the powerplant’s reliability, which wasn’t great in the first iterations of the original RX-7. Oh, and all those points must be ticked while keeping the RX-7’s spirit alive, as in, it should handle and generally drive like a charm. No compromises.

We reported back in October 2019 that Mazda could be working on a so-called RX-9 that would come to pick up where the RX-7 left off, Wankel engine included, however, due to the electrification wave that’s sweeping through the car industry, such a mill would first come to market in the shape of a range extender. It could, later, be used as a standalone powerplant in a sports car.

In may 2018, Ikuo Maeda, Mazda’s Head of Global Design, told Driving.co.uk that the Japanese carmaker is “acutely aware of the need for a flagship sports car.” Well, hello, what are you waiting for, Mazda?

Coming back to the topic at hand, Gonzalez’s renderings look like they’ve been designed by Mazda itself. They show a long hood sloped towards the front, design cues from the current Mazda3, and an MX-5-esque rear end with taillights joined by an LED strip counterbalanced by a quad-exhaust setup.

To be perfectly honest, we do believe that the rear end is a bit too much, but otherwise, the nicely flowing shape of the car is pretty close to what we’d expect from Mazda if it indeed built a modernized RX-7. Again, what are you waiting for, Mazda?