On May 30th 1967, Mazda sold its first rotar-engine powered car and simultaneously, the world’s first dual-rotar, rotary engine vehicle, the Cosmo Sport. 40 years latter and while most manufactures have long abandoned the idea of developing the innovative but also problematic, rotar-engine, Mazda continues to believe in Felix Wankel’s dream. Tomorrow, May 30, 2007, Mazda will celebrate the rotary engine 40th birthday by opening a dedicated website -we’ll have more details on that later on.
Don’t really care about widgets? Well, we thought about that, so in compensation we added 50 (yes it took as a while) high-res images of all the rotar-engine powered cars that Mazda has produced the past 40 years; from the luscious Cosmo Sport to the weird, Holden Kingswood based, Roadpacer and from the Parkway bus to the dual-fueled (gasoline & hydrogen) RX-8 Hydrogen RE. -Follow the jump for the high-res image-gallery
Famillia Rotary/Mazda R100
Luce Rotary Coupe/Mazda R130 Coupe
Capella Rotary/Mazda RX-2
Savanna/Mazda RX-3
Luce Rotary/Mazda RX-4
Parkway Rotary 26
Roadpacer AP
Cosmo AP/Mazda RX-5
Savanna RX-7/Mazda RX-7(1st)
Savanna RX-7/Mazda RX-7(2nd)
Luce(4th)
Eunos Cosmo
Mazda RX-7(3rd)
RX-8
RX-8 Hydrogen RE