2017 marks the 50th year since the first Mazda production car with a rotary engine debuted, beginning their journey down one of the most unique rabbit holes in automotive lore that will forever colour the plucky Japanese automaker.
Back then, the company was known as the Toyo Kogyo Corporation, and wanted to give their cars a differentiating factor that would assure their independence in a blossoming Japanese automotive industry.
In 1961, after some corporate rumination, they decided that a unique engine would be this key differentiator and proceeded to license the rotary engine technology from NSU Motorenwerke AG and Wankel GmbH, shaking hands to a knowledge-sharing agreement to further its development.
A prototype rotary engine arrived at their headquarters shortly after and testing promptly began, and so too did the challenges. The engine seized within the first hour of trials, but Mazda knew that their failure to advance this engine technology would ultimately lead to their demise.
Chief Engineer Kenichi Yamamoto assembled a top shelf team of engineers from within the company - internally known as the 47 Samurai - to basically science the heck out of it until it succumbed to weight of their ingenuity and persistence.
It was a tall order, as no previous automaker had been able to conquer the inherent technical hurdles that this type of engine presents with the tools of the time, abandoning their own rotary efforts to concentrate conventional in-line or V type engines.
After an arduous gestation period, Mazda had cracked it, and was ready to unveil their inaugural 982cc twin-rotor engine within the Cosmo Sport 110S at the 1964 Tokyo Motor Show, their first stab at a sports car and a halo model used to showcase its novel motor. A sporty Mazda was entirely alien notion at that time as well since they had been known for their trucks and small passenger cars up until then.
The lightweight roadster prototype was met with applause and three years later on May 30th, 1967, it went on sale in Japan. Production carried on for 5 years wherein 1,176 examples would be produced, but it introduced Mazda onto a new stage in great fashion and setting a precedent as a technical power within the industry.
Mazda took the Cosmo racing as early as they could, entering it into the 84-hour Marathon de la Route endurance race at the Nurburgring where it finished 4th overall. The astonishing result spawned further efforts, and successes, in motorsport. This culminated in what is arguably the most revered rotary-powered car of all time: the 787B Le Mans racer that won the legendary French endurance race in 1991.
At this point in 2017, the last Mazda to carry a rotary engine is the RX-8 which ended production five years ago in 2012, the last in a line of two-door sports coupes from the Japanese marque and powered by a 1.3-litre twin-rotor RENESIS 13B-MSP that produced a maximum of 177kW at 9,000rpm.
To date, Mazda had produced a total of 1.99 million rotary-engine vehicles, including sports cars, sedans, and even a 26-passenger bus. Mazda is focusing on their SkyActiv in-line petrol and diesel engines right now, perfecting the art of very high and very low compression ratios to extract the most performance and/or fuel economy.
However, they did rekindle the prospect of a halo sports car with a turbocharged rotary engine when it showed off the stunning RX Vision concept at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show. Despite CEO Masamichi Kogai stating that Mazda has no plans to introduce another rotary-engine production car, many believe that this year will see the return of an all-new model possibly called the RX-9.
Either way, the story of the rotary engine is one of the most enthralling in automotive history and is a legacy that Mazda will no doubt never want to distance themselves from.
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