The Rotary Engine

At Mazda like to do things a bit differently. Be a little daring. Break down the boundaries. It's apparent in our concept cars, production cars and every-day design touches. Most of all, it can be seen in the ongoing development of the rotary engine.

Suck, squeeze, bang, blow. That's the basic concept of the piston engine combustion process. And it's exactly the same with the RENESIS rotary engine. Matching the reliability you would expect from a traditional piston engine, the rotary engine which powers the Mazda RX-8 R3 has an extraordinary track record in pushing performance levels and engineering convention.

Birth of an icon

The rotary engine was invented in 1957 by German engineer Felix Wankel. He believed an engine could achieve its four strokes - intake (suck), compression (squeeze), combustion (bang), and exhaust (blow) - while rotating. He also believed this would enable much better performance. Wankel's early work with another vehicle manufacturer, NSU, enabled him to build the case for rotary power and over time he was able to develop working models of the engine.

Mazda president Tsuneji Matsuda was quick to identify potential in the rotary and worked directly on forming a relationship with NSU. This was sealed in 1961 and Mazda soon began work on its own rotary through its newly formed RE (Rotary Engine) Research Department.

In the years which followed Mazda invested heavily in different prototypes and experimented with the number of rotors. Engineers also came up with a solution to one of the serious issues effecting improvements: chatter marks. These 'nail marks of the devil' had confounded rotary exponents for some time and it was Mazda engineers who identified - and fixed - the problem with the oil seal.

Rotary reaches the masses

Then in 1978 came the landmark Mazda RX-7. This groundbreaking coupe took the rotary engine to a whole new generation of sports car drivers. Three generations and 14 years later, over 800,000 RX-7s had been sold across the world.

Innovation continued with turbochargers and dynamic superchargers in the early 80s, increasing performance all the time while new engines were tested in creative and unusual ways. For example, development of the triple-rotor rotary engine included participation in the 1991 Le Mans 24 Hour Endurance Race. The Mazda 787B, led by driver Johnny Herbert, won the race. Afterwards, the car didn't even need a new sparkplug and could have run the entire race again - testament to the quality of the engine.

Now, 30 years later, the style of cars has evolved but the rotary spirit remains the same. Recent innovation has seen the development of a hydrogen rotary engine for use in Japan. Remarkable and easily identifiable, the rotary engine is an evolving engineering masterpiece.