What you’re seeing above isn’t the rendered visage of the next Mazda rotary sports car, but the leaked fascia of the new CX-5 crossover. Better get used to it.
In an interview with Automotive News, Mazda CEO Masamichi Kogai shot down the idea of a revived RX-7, RX-8 or RX-anything, stating
“We don’t have that kind of vehicle in our future product plan…If you increase the number of segments, then the resources we can allocate to each will decline and that will prevent us from developing truly good products.The company is still in the process of improving its financial structure. We want to focus our limited resources on the Skyactiv products that we have today.”
For a small, independent auto maker with limited resources, this is a sound decision. At any given auto maker, there are finite funds that must be allocated across the company for different aspects of new model development (design, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, regulatory concerns, parts, service, retail etc). For an outfit like Mazda, these are best spent on volume models like the CX-5, Mazda 3 and the upcoming CX-3 crossover. All of the “fun” money was likely poured into the next MX-5, which uses a bespoke architecture that cannot be amortized via other models in the Mazda lineup.
At least they’re not saying they’re abandoning the RX line…yet.
And at least they tell you outright it’s not coming (yet). Better than some other companies that keep hyping that it’s coming year after year.
I sense bitterness, is that you Jerry Seinfeld?
They continue to do research on rotaries, and I have been told by one corporate employee that there *is* a Sky-R engine.
But research and concepts are very different than production. Until they shore up their finances, they should not even consider releasing an RX.
That being said, I do hope they are profitable enough to put out another sports car based on the Miata or RX-8. Drop in a 300+ hp V6 and sell it for low $30s (similar to a top-of-the-line 6). They should be able to add direct injection to their existing 3.7L and hit that number without much problem. (The Mustang V6 is the same engine and it already has 300 hp without DI.)
I don’t know that mazda will have the rights to that engine for the next generation.
I like the CX-5, but couldn’t you get some pics of the new CX-3, that’s the big news?
I think a lot of people would be happy with an RX-5. Surely the RX-8 engine would fit in the ND Miata?
What’s what I’m thinking. Why not modify (and amortize) the ND platform and make a RWD rotary coupe from it? It’s not that hard to extend platforms, just look to how GM does it.
Mazda said no, deal with it
Because the rotary is doomed to lousy gas mileage. The constraints of an engine with 3 moving parts force the combustion chambers to have the worst shape for gas mileage (pancake-like). They would do much better to put a piston engine in an RX-8 than a rotary in a Miata. (Imagine your Miata with truck-like fuel efficiency.)
I do agree the rotary has never been a particularly good idea as an engine, and I wouldn’t have one.
But I did like the RX7 styling. Especially the Savannah version – which nobody has ever explained to me what that means exactly.
There was a time when the rotary was highly competitive. But the piston engines have improved quite a bit since then, while the rotary has not.
The Savanna was just what they called the RX-7 in Japan, which was a replacement for the original Savanna coupe sold here as the RX3001
Thanks. So there were extra trims applied to the circa 88 RX7 Savanna I saw the other day – here in Ohio. Or it was a JDM import.
Except for some trim bits, I don’t see where the Savanna was all that different then the RX-7 in appearance anyway
http://www.hiroboy.com/catalog/product_images/Mazda-RX-7-Savanna-FC3S.jpg
You can have a rotary with good to great mpg you just have to give up the great to good specific output. What killed the engine was primarily the lack of competition, leaving a single mainstream manufacturer to supply the market with their own derivation of the design. The fact that that manufacturer was based in a country that taxed on displacement doomed the engines to be to small to perform like they should. A 2.0L producing just 240 ish HP (exceptional for a piston engine but modest for a wankle) would easily produce mid 30s mpg using last gen technology. This compares well to something like the S2000 but with significantly more torque. Designed for HP more typical of two liters (150-170hp) mpg could climb to high 30s low40s. Again assuming last generation technology. Paired direct injection and especially Mazdas skyactiv philosophy the performance envelope would be very promising. If there is an immediate cause for the engines demise it is probably production cost. As simple as the mechanism is the specialized manufacturing techniques are not cost effective.
“(Imagine your Miata with truck-like fuel efficiency.)”
I barely beat 20mpg in my 2002 Miata (mostly city driving with a heavy right foot, admittedly). Before SkyActiv, the drop in MPG by using a rotary wouldn’t have been that bad. Thankfully that’s no longer the case.
I got low 30s (hwy) on my ’93 Saturn, I got low to mid-30s on my ’99 Accord, and I get high 30s on my ’08 Civic (all of them stick). I had use of an RX-8 for a week in ’04 when I was writing about the engine. Highway mileage was around 20. (Other than that, I absolutely loved the car. I would have bought one had the gas mileage been closer to 30.
@Daivd Holtzman
Yup, but it’s actually worse than that. Combustion takes time, and the steady rotation of the Wankel means that the shape isn’t even a pancake except for an instant. It’s a blurred mess of, well, something or other.
The piston engine for 15 to 20 degrees of crank rotation either side of TDC has very little piston movement (and that can be varied by connecting rod to stroke ratio). The combustion chamber stays pretty defined in shape leading to good combustion.
The rotary has no hope competing by its very design.
High performance piston engines deliver similar MPGs without approaching the hp per liter.
Worse than the mileage are the emissions. The Renesis simply can’t pass that anymore.
Sure it can, the only emission it truely over produces is Nox.
The NC Miata shared a lot with the RX-8. It didn’t really help much.
The Miata is also several hundred pounds lighter than the RX-8. On paper, it’s a better fit in the Miata (upgrade on power & motivates a lighter car) than the RX-8.
For better or for worse, Mazda’s approach to the rotary is to limit its use to special-purpose sports cars that are dedicated specifically to it. Not cheap.
You are not wrong. I had hoped that the rx8 would be the beginning of a range of cars powered by the wankle. The 8 as the livable sedan the 7 returning as the true sports car on a shortened coupe version of the chassis and a replacement for the millenia/929/Cosmo on an extended platform serving as a premium luxury/near luxury sedan powered by a big three/four rotor renesis with perhaps boost available across the line.
Largely because they don’t make sense anywhere else (although some Mazda spokesmen have thrown crumbs to the rotary faithful about the possibility of a rotary range extender in some sort of electrical/hybrid (volt style) car).
Other places a rotary might make sense:
motorcycles (tried exactly once. I suspect that the same issues that sports cars have kill them here as well).
Airplanes. From what I’ve heard, probably the only place rotaries shine. *Expensive* to modify for air use (likely involves ceramic seals and custom cooling work), but the reliability of 3 parts (and no piston vibration) wins out. After 40-50 years of ignoring this market, I’d assume that there isn’t any money in directly making engines for it.
Marine: Doubt it. Long-term max power use might make sense, but nothing else makes me think of boating with a rotary.
At least 3 rotary motorcycles were built, the herculese a suzuki and another iirc. There was the verypopular rotary snowmobile and even wankle lawn mowers. GM has considered a wankle range extender for the next volt and they are used as power units in aircraft. Light aircraft sometimes use mazda based engines including single rotor adaptations. Don’t forget the mazda rotary truck. GMs rotary cars had promise as they used the very approach I suggest. Larger displacement lower specific output relative to other applications.
Worse than the rotary’s fuel economy problem, is its emissions problem.
Not to mention 4 decades of poor reliability reputation.
They did not have a reliability problem. They were perfectly reliable until they lost compression due to worn out tip seals. That is a durability problem.
If properly taken care of, they are reliable. If not, then not so much.
This is spot on.
One of the head techs and a guy who is a rotary nut at Atkins Rotary, who literally helps build rotary motors for race cars, specifically told me that the average life span of a well cared (maintain oil levels and cooling system) for a 6 PORT RENESIS (the higher revving kind found in the manual equipped RX-8, not the 4 port found in the crippled automatic) is 160,000 miles before Apex or corner seal issues.
That said, there are dozens on RX8club with 200k+ on original motors.
I’m at 114,000 and have yet to have a non-maintenance issue.
I wonder if that average includes the early failures due to oiling. With only a few oil holes and low injection rates at low rpm/load (for emissions testing) the early motors were vulnerable to over heating the seals during extended low rpm operation. Mazda probably figured buyers would be revving the things as intended, they didn’t realize most drivers would plod around off idle like grandpa in his lesabre. Autos were especially vulnerable it seems. Four port renesis engines though seem to only differ in the fifth and sixth ports not being bored and iirc smaller exhaust sleeves. They should make good bases for future builds.
We had an ’04. Great fun to drive, with speed, handling, and looks to boot. With a new engine at 68k (covered under the extended warranty Mazda provided when they realized that year had issues) and a $3k transmission job 500 miles later (not under warranty.) 16mpg average, 6 tires @ $230 each in 2 years, charging system issues and emissions test failure… Loved that car but traded it in upside down just to get out of the expense.
Actually they are notoriously reliable even when the seals go. Short of physically locking up they can continue to run almost indefinitely even if not well. Seal wear however is not an inevitable thing, atleast not any more than in a piston engine.
One-in-the-same, especially when your engine wears out while still under warranty, which is not unheard of for early RX8s.
I won’t have too as Mazda is a mostly non-issue in these parts, the most common example I see is the 3 which itself is infrequent.
Crap… my ascii Snoopy got garbled.
It’s Barney!
Here’s the latest Mazda…
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140411010207/hotwheels/images/e/e8/Snoopu.JPG
Good sight lines, anyway.
At least half my comments haven’t posted in the last 6 weeks or so.
And no, it’s not some s*i whatever thing.
Is TTAC ever going to fix the problem or communicate what the status of the glitch is?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many, many thousands of post/comments have been lost due to this problem, which remains unresolved.
Agreed – it’s pretty annoying.
Mazda’s are gonna look more like cats than Jaguars! But I still don’t agree with the present nonsense Mazda marketing.
SOUL AND BESPOKE INDIVIDUALITY AND PASSION.
(Or similar. Ugh.)
That’s Japanese for “More Snoopy-nosed smiley-faces”
Janglish is so ’80s. So is showcasing kanji and thinking we’ll think it’s cool.
“bespoke” means “pretentious” to everyone except for the company using the word.
Any Brits reading this?
Isn’t “bespoke” common speech in GB and an exact equivalent of our “custom”?
That’s what I’ve picked up from your TV and internet media, anyway.
Not a Brit, but I can answer that.
Yes.
Usually applied to Taylor made suits and hats, until the auto industry got a hold of it
Tailor*
So she’s (swiftly) branching out to men’s clothing now?
Geez, you guys are pedant
Everyone in the auto industry uses “bespoke” wrong. Yes, it’s “custom,” but more importantly, “made to order.”
The Miata architecture is not “bespoke.” It’s unique, dedicated to only the Miata (until the Fiat version comes out). But none of that implies it’s custom made.
I know, so what’s with all this bespoke BS. By all accounts it’s a rather wasted platform
I can hear them coming…………………
The $5000 car driving arbiters of automotive edicts………………
Demanding that Mazda pour money into a dead end product line and abandon the bread n butter mainstreamers keepign them afloat………………
Because cars like the RX-x help provide them with a temporary reprieve from a life of mediocrity and missed expectations, made falsely exciting with an “alternative” mainstreamer, like a Volvo 850 Turbo or GC Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS…………………..
No……………… barring significant investment, and technology that would push said car even further out of reach of this move’s biggest critics (and the volume/profits necessary to rationalize said investment), rotary is DOA. Shame as I do like the concept, and think it could work, but only with a ton of tech- displacement on demand, turbocharging, direct injection, etc etc. Nobody is going to buy a $50K RX-9 that gets washed by a $38K Camaro SS 1LE.
Have you been taking typing lessons from …m…
Me…………
The dead guitar guy?
Please don’t anyone ever get that certifiable here again.
No no, that was guitar slinger (spelling different, can’t type it filter wont’ allow).
…m… is a different commenter, who feels it’s necessary to begin and end every single sentence with an ellipsis.
Great.. as long as there has been no reanimation of that spectacular goofball.
Let him soak into the soil.
No, guitar slinger was a dick along with mad scientist, who I believe is the only person to get banned since the “incident”
I see the same thing on Crackberry forums. People begging, day in and day out, for the new OS to be put on the defunct Playbook tablet.
2 consecutive CEO’s have said “we’re done with the Playbook.” Not one CEO, now… TWO of them. The company took a half billion dollar (billion with a B) write off because of the stupid tablet.
Yet these fanboys keep petitioning a failing company, which MAY finally see a quarter in the black next year, to waste more resources porting its OS to a dead piece of hardware.
I own a Playbook, and a BB phone. Use the phone every day but I keep the slab in a drawer somewhere as a reminder that that money could have gone towards an ipad.
You can sell the Playbook on eBay for $65. :)
I could probably sell it on crackberry for $100, but I won’t. It’s worth more as a reminder. One day I intend to record myself smashing it with a hammer and posting it on CB and YouTube.
I believe this is for the best. Mazda needs to concentrate on what will sell in numbers. Not to mention there is no way they could create a car as nice looking as the 3rd Gen RX7. I hear the RX8 was really fun, but the proportions made me sad every time I looked at it.
“Mazda needs to concentrate on what will sell in numbers.”
This is true, but nobody at Mazda seems to know what that is. They haven’t exceeded 2% of US market share, ever, I think.
Mazda probably has the highest imbalance of name recognition vs actual sales of any major mfr.
All mazda needs to do is make profit. Market share is not directly related to that, ask GM.
Let’s face it, the sports car segment isn’t doing very well overall. Mazda is right in not building a second sports car.
Although it’s not a car I’d want, I’m thankful that the MX-5 is still being built.
My respect for mazda, at least they keep trying to make something personal in design, I hope make a comeback of rotary engine with hidrogen (others make the investment for the network to provide hidrogen, they make the best sport car zoom zoom)
Having bought an ’80 RX-7 as my very first new car, I have a soft spot for the rotary. But, as others have said, it has *way* too many issues (we’ll use my RX as a baseline):
1) It’s hugely inefficient (part 1). While displacing only 1100cc, it turned so much of the gasoline energy into heat that it needed a radiator better suited to a Chevy rat motor (that would be a big-block V8 for those not up on obsolete muscle-car slang).
2) It’s hugely inefficient (part 2). The exhaust system would also look right at home on a muscle car. The exhaust temperature played hell with emissions and exhaust system longevity. The tendency to backfire made this even worse.
3) While smooth as glass and with a turbine-like whine, by comparison, it made Italian fours seem like torque monsters. Nothing (and I mean nothing) would happen below 4K. It reminded me of my two-stroke motorcycles.
4) It intentionally burns oil to preserve the apex seals. This was actually a huge improvement over the RX-4, more than tripling apex seal life to almost 90K miles, on average. Heaven help you if you didn’t make checking the oil a standard procedure at each fill-up.
5) It’s a gas hog. 16-18 mpg got you a total of about 100HP.
I loved the damned thing. And, yes, I know that great strides were made in terms of power and torque in subsequent model years, but modern reciprocating engines have eaten away at the rotary advantage of excellent power-to-weight and power-to-volume ratios while, simultaneously improving drivability and reliability.
I’ve often though Mazda should focus on a larger RWD MX (MX-6?) coupe with skyactiv rather than the RX with a rotary.
Only C-level people at Mazda will ever know how much money they lost on the RX8 from replacing engines. I do know that they had to open a plant here in VA exclusively to rebuild rotary engines. That tells me that it was a LOT of failed engines.
No business case exists to bring that engine back. Its reputation will limit sales exclusively to fanboys, dooming it to a quick death. Hell, even the tried and true V6 is struggling to survive in this new world of T4’s.
The renesis failures had less to do with being a rotary than a poorly conceived and implemented oiling system. Even then the engines can be perfectly reliable if you don’t drive like a grandmother. To put it simply, apex seal oiling was reduced drastically at low load/rpm for emissions testing purposes. Driving an early car at near idle constantly lead to over heated and warped seals. Driving that same engine regularly as intended reduces the risk to practically nothing and starting in 06 the engines were revised with both new software and new oiling holes and do not suffer significant failures. The revision was done while still meeting emissions as well. What people seem to over look when it comes to rotary reliability is that failures are most commonly associated with peripheral systems, not the mechanics of the rotary engine it’s self. The FD failed typically due to fuel system problems. And all modern 13Bs are at risk from the oil pellet failing. The same mechanism has destroyed many ford and dodge transmissions and countless piston engines have died from poor oiling system design. The go-to failure modes for the rotary have not been common for decades.
I for one think it’s a real shame that I won’t see a rotary engined sports car again, and I for one would be first in line to buy one if it were sold new. However, I fully understand that for Mazda to continue R&D into the design is fiscal suicide.
Oh well, I have my ’86. Between my ’86 RX-7 and my ’06 Acura RSX I am pretty set and I don’t NEED to buy a car anyways. If Mazda releases a new RX car I will be first in line. If not, then I am happy with what I have.
Good call on Mazda’s part. 20 years from now the RX cars are going to be the ones we wish we had bought to enjoy at some point when they are all gone or too expensive to own. I’m ok with that.
Mazda definitely should shove something too powerful in the mx-5 chassis at some point though. I’ve been in enough crazy miata builds to recognize something special is just sitting there waiting to be had. This is some seriously low hanging fruit.
They specifically limit traction in new MX5s to preserve character. A factory direct monster miata would be a bad move, especially if successful.
The Mazda 6 looks sweet. Put a V6 in it. The masochism that is the RX series is just a bit too much; I remember hanging with the RX7 club at Woodward multiple years, and, to a man, all I heard was a tale of woe and significant transfer payments to his mechanic.
Back to the premise of the article, i.e. the front of the new Mazdas:
Why in the world did they create, then approve, such overuse of black eyeliner and mascara around the headlights? It looks like a 14-year-old experimenting with her older sister’s Goth makeup collection.
(Get with it, Mazda, cars should look like CARS, not cartoon characters or anime-inspired animals!)
In the past topic of closed Japanese market suspect, someone tried to find hidden chicken tax by comparing local price of mazda speed 3 and golf GTI.
I have a feeling Mazda couldn’t place the mazda speed 3 as a sport image leader or price it at profitable range while halo car RX-8 was still offered for Japan, although they halt the export.
as long as Mazda is at current market place, even offering RX, it may not dream to plan a car with price higher than USD 35k and thus output more than 300hp.
That kind of car existence will again squeeze place for higher performance version of 3 or 6, which may be a more promising money maker.
That may well be the case when looking at volum shoppers but typical enthusiasts don’t seem to cross shop such different cars as the speed3 miata and RX8. Whatever the pricing those that love the power of the ms3 want nothing to do with a gutless 8 and 8 lovers don’t want the crass fwd antics of the 3.