The rumour mill has certainly been churning along since the RX-8 ceased production in 2012 regarding what would be Mazda’s new flagship sports car for their line-up. And Mazda themselves definitely helped it along with their latest RX-Vision concept generating quite a bit of hype and hope for a rotary engined sports car revival.
However in one fell swoop Mazda CEO Masamichi Kogai has gone ahead and quashed those rumours in a recent interview with Automotive News. Asked if there were any plans for a larger sports car entry than the MX-5 Kogai stated a short “No” in response.
Striving towards a greener future with ever tightening emission and economy standards, Mazda have placed the rotary engine back into research and development until these challenges can be overcome. When questioned on whether Mazda has abandoned plans to use the rotary engine as the main traction powerplant for future vehicles Kogai said: “We ended production of the RX-8 with the rotary engine. But if we were to restart production of the rotary engine again, we need to make sure it wouldn’t be just short-lived. We need it to meet future emissions regulations. We are still conducting our r&d activity to overcome any issues we have with emissions and fuel efficiency.”
The rotary engine may live on in the form of a range extender for an electrically powered Mazda vehicle. Utilising a battery and electric motor to drive the wheels the rotary engine can be used as a generator, charging the batteries and extending the range. Mazda built the Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid concept car as a way to showcase this new take on the rotary engine in 2007. For this application the rotary engine is well suited thanks to its compact size and efficiency at low constant engine speed.
