Audi 2005 A6 spy test drive, also guess who made the first Rotary Engine!
 

We visited with my dad's friend and family in Detroit, MI for the weekend and I got to learn a couple new things about Audi. First of all, my dad's friend is the President of Audi North America, so he had a lot of pre-production cars at his house. I drove the new A6 3.2, except it was a German-spec with Km/h only on the dash. I am unable to show pictures because there are only 12 of these vehicles in the USA, and I had to sign a paper when I drove it; so they could prosecute me if I showed pics.
It is a nice car, but its extremely ugly on the exterior, and MMI is not even close to the simplicity of I-drive. You have 12-buttons surrounding their MMI controller, BMW has 0 buttons. He went on to tell me that Audi made the first Rotary-engine in the early 1950's, and Audi gets royaltys off of every Rotary engine built. I was quite fascinated with that. The one thing to get used to is that it was an electronic parking brake that needs to be released before you drive (obviously). It took me a minute to find the button though. :)

Well, just thought I would share my exciting weeked; even though I wish I could show all the pics I took.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...e/f7cbab36.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...8/f7cbac36.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...e/f7cbacfb.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...1/f7cbac71.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...8/f7cbabb8.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...c/f7cbad35.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...d/f7cbaaf0.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...f/f7cbabf8.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...3/f7cbab85.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...e/f7cbad78.jpg

It is a very nice car, and I hope to get a chance to drive the new A8 short-wheelbase very soon. That is going to debut as a 2006 model.

TroyJ.

Actually it was NSU, though I suspect that they were subsequently acquired by Audi.

nice pics???

NSU merged with Audi to form Audi-NSU. The license was from NSU and was transferred to VW by nature of owning Audi. VW/Audi had nothing to do with the rotary engine and their conservatism killed it internally leaving Mazda as the only company carrying on with it. Mazda did a better job with the rotary than NSU ever did.

???
MMI>>>>I drive

I dont know if this i correct or not, but one of my friends said that there were rotarys in WWI british fighter planes. Have not heard this anywhere else.

Radial engines for airplanes are different than the Rotary engine as we know it.

That's not to say someone didn't put one in an airplane.

Might have been a rotary engine of some sort, but not a Wankel-type rotary, as Felix Wankel worked during WW2 at the German Institute of Aviation, developping rotary valve piston aero-engines.
Pre- and WW2 piston aero-engine are a great source of inspiration for interesting features that improve perfs and FE.

Radial Engines:

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/radial-engine2.htm

Rotary Engine:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/rotary-engine.htm

Those were radial piston engines. Inside the radial engine. There were german experiments witht he rotary during WWII but mostly for compressors and similar applications.

NSU also developed rotary boats and lorries. The rotary you speak of was commonly used in several aerospace designs, but like it was said before, they werent wankel, they were radial: pistons in a circle driving the prop. The wankel's rotors were far under developed and most of the layouts were still single rotor at the time because of teething problems. its not like they had CAD back then :D

In aircraft engines the Radial was different than Rotaries but looked similar on the outside.

Aviation"Rotary" engines back during WW I had the crankshaft bolted to the firewall and the entire engine rotated with the propellor bolted to a flange on the front of the engine block. The cowling covering the engine was a neccesity because the spinning engine would fling hot castor oil all over the airframe and in the pilots face! That was why early pilots wore the ubiquitous scarf so they could wipe the oil from their face and goggles!

Radial engines had the engine block bolted to the firewall in the convential manner with the crankshaft connected to the propellor hub thru a reduction (planetary) gearbox.

Rotary engine animated GIF

Gnome engine

Rotary engine

NSU was the first to implement it into an automobile, well before Audi was ever involved.

I actually did a little research for my CMST450 Class last semster on these engines.

I'm pretty sure this is correct.

http://www.mazda.com/history/rotary/e1-1.html

my friend called me when his audi dealer he works for got the new a6 in for a week
it was german k/m
sad thing is they had to kill it
yup all those cars dont have vin#'s so they are scheduled for demolition.
sorry i just saw i-robot again :)

Hi Rotary Fans

Did you ever hear of that company:

http://www.wankel-rotary.com ???


In case somebody is interested in reading more about low weight Diesel- Wankel- Engines

and understands some German: Please mail me. I have a very interesting pdf -file concerning this subject.

Cheers

Hartmut.