50 years of the Mazda rotary engine

31 May 2017

The Japanese celebrate the 50th anniversary of the use of the rotary engine

May 30, 1967 year Mazda released the model Cosmo Sport under the hood which was the only one in the world double rotary Wankel engine. It was built only 1176 vehicles with this powertrain. Representatives of the firm not began to reassure enthusiasts, who dream about return the hood of some models of rotary engines and said that hope to see a similar engine on the Assembly line just not worth it.

Mazda bought the license to manufacture of rotary engines have a company NSU Motorenwerke AG and Wankel GmbH in 1961 started development for your internal combustion engines in hoping the firm will be able to positively stand out from other manufacturers.

The most prominent unit of this type can be called four motors for Mazda 787B built for participate in  the"24 hours of Le Mans". To the way, the prototype proved to be very reliable, which led the team Mazda in 1991 win Le Mans. After Mazda 787В no one did racing prototypes with rotary engines.

Interestingly, history Mazda has built nearly 2 million rotary engines, equipping their sedans, sports cars and even 26 passenger buses. The last model, which was equipped with a rotary-piston engine was the RX-8, released in 2012. After that, the rotors went oblivion – it all came down to increased fuel consumption and emissions of pollutants.

In Mazda welcome the desire of enthusiasts, from which greenhouse hope for the "Wankel", but they even claim that there is a small group of engineers involved in development of rotary engines in Japan.