Corvette Rotary Saved From Extinction
 

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/26/d...-from-rooftop/




I remember this car gracing the cover of Road & Track magazine. I may still have the issue in my possession- but this was one of several Corvette prototypes built for the auto show circuit, and it was rotting away somewhere untended. Someone got wind of it's impending destruction, and persuaded GM to let a museum owner (unfortunately in Scotland) to take it away.

Amazing how GM just tosses it's ideas away like this, but. ....

Personally, I think a rotary engine does not belong in an American vehicle, I could understand if they put it in a German vehicle since Felix Wankel was a German Engineer. Corvette should just stick with their V8's since that's all they've been good for..

I personally agree. A v-8 just seems more in place with a corvette.

Some things never change...:wiggle:

Of course where would we be with the Rotary engine if we had more auto makers developing this great design. Think of it, we would be light years ahead of where we are now!!

^^^Very true.

ah the rotary bashing in the comments of that blog post is strong...

GM finally figured out the Wankel wasn't big enough.......

yeah, seriously, this car was doomed. Make it guzzle just as much gas as the v8, yet be much slower with no torque. That engine has no business being related to the corvette name, so history was correct on this. PHEW!!!!

Mazda then to now has doubled the HP and the MPG has gone up too. What was the HP of the corvette then, and double it and the MPG........anybody??

Don't forget this design is really old. Had the concept been further developed, things might have turned out different.

All the fat glass and steel body? They should've known better. Those rims look like they could hold down an oil rig.

Sounds like both of you are pretty un-informed then, as GM was planning on putting a Rotary engine in everything it made, as the rotary engines emissions were less than half of the emissions of a simular powered V6 or v8 motor.

In fact the Vega was slated to be rotary powered and only at the last minutes did they slap in piston motors.

If not for the invention of the multi stage cat converter, no American 6 cyl or V8 would have been able to be sold in the USA due to emissions.

GM put more money into developing the rotary engine than any other manufacture out there, and both the rotary engines by GM and Nissan/Suzuki were almost as advanced as those from Mazda.

Yet the cat converter saved GM from further costs as it only added $500 to the cost of the car to use, compared to the $1200 a rotary motor would have added to the cost.

Of course NSU/Audi also made rotary powered cars, and Mercedes/Dailmer Benz held the continuous track speed recored in the C111 rotary powered Mercedes, up until about 10 years ago.

So all the major manufactures were making rotary powered vehicles, just to be able to sell the car and meet US emissions.

Of course Mazda didn't need a cat converter until almost 10 years later than the piston engines to meet the same emissions requirements.

Given the similar weights of the C6 and RX-8, it would be interesting to put the Renesis/Aisin combo in a C6 chassis and do side-by-side comparison drives between the two cars. Perhaps put the LS-7 in the RX-8 and do the same.

i wonder what happened to the other rotary corvette concept? it looked alot like the aero-vette concet and had a four rotor in it.

That was a beautiful car.

Sucks we have to go to EU to see this car and small part in Rotary History.
Just surprise's me that not alot of people accept or realize that alot of the car makers were looking into the rotary before the invention of the CAT. I wish to say it was a bit on the History Channel on Motors where they did a small 5-10min piece on the rotary and they mentioned this.

Imagine if only GM kept on developing the Rotary. We'd be discussing on the boards here about doing a GM Rotary Swap or keeping the Mazda Rotary haha.. god now that would be a friggin' insane thread topic.

It is cool that they saved a piece of automotive history.

As for the rotary bashing, bash away. It will never ever change the way i feel about my car or it technology.

it's funny reading the comments to the original article.
I always do wonder 'what if Mazda had some competition in the rotary department'. The Rotary is a very young technology compared to the piston. Imagine if it was invented the same time as the piston?