wakeech

i like the rotary because, as a sports motor, it's just better. you can make more power on less mass, less volume... you can get more cubic inches per pound than a push-rod V8. you can make 159 lbft of torque out of 1.3L (that's calc'd on one rev, not 2 like displacement) with only 15mm of stroke: that's just bloody brilliant. the reasons why i love them are endless.

the wankel is probably the best performance motor ever concieved. (<-thats a period)

RX7 Guy

My 1987 RX-7 has 264,000 miles on it's original, un-rebuilt engine & believe me, I've made that poor little engine work super hard over the years. It doesn’t smoke, burn oil or give any other indication that it won’t make it to 300,000 miles & beyond.

There’s a lot of ignorance out there regarding rotary engine reliability…some of it resulted from the third gen’s being over boosted & undercooled but most of it is just a bunch of pistoncentric bull crap.

SA22C

Like Sputnik said, it's the intangibles that make the rotary so special to motoring enthusiasts. It also doesn't hurt that it has powered some serious sporting chassis's in the form of the three generations of RX-7 and now the RX-8.

Joshua-1

That's good to hear, Like I said, I don't know one way or the other on rotary reliability- So when I read this it makes me feel better.

97gpGT

The Rotary engine gives a car a unique feel, makes it stand out from all of the piston engined cars out there. It can rev higher and smoother than piston engines can. Even though the redline is set at 9k from the factory, the same as the S2000, I'm sure that extra revs will be much, much easier to attain on the Renesis than on the F20, and as long as the torque curve stays flat, that means extra power . The flat torque curve is another feature that makes the rotary engine impressive. Most high revving piston engines, like the 2ZZ-GE, K20A, F20C, etc. use some sort of variable valve lift system (VVTL-i, iVTEC, and VTEC, respectively) that creates a big jump in power at a certain rpm. Before this jump, the engine is lackluster at best and lacks the fun factor in being able to experience that pushed-back-in-your-seat feeling when you stomp on the gas. The Renesis has a nice smooth torque curve from practically at idle all the way up to redline, which is something that will be unique to the RX-8 in the realm of high-revving sports cars when it comes out.

Blue87Sport

As an engineer, I love the simple elegance of the design. I love that they can achieve the level of output from such a small engine.

As a driver, I love the visceral response of the engine. The snarl that turns into a wail as the RPMs climb. The smoothness of the power. The ease at how it revs up to (OK, past) the redline without sounding like the engine is trying to tear itself apart.

As a cheapskate, I love how reliable this engine is, despite the occasional flogging it receives. Using this car as a daily driver since December 1986 without wondering whether it will start in the morning.

As for numbers, the only one I care about is smiles/day and I get plenty with this car.

wakeech

...the variable lift and timing mechanisms in these valvetrains, although when "off cam" are tuned for economy (in these engines particularly for the Celica GTS, RSX-S with S2000 to a lesser degree), is better than if you had just one big cam which ran the pistons at all rpm... idle would be higher with a big lope, torque at low rpm would suck even more, worse fuel economy, etc etc.

97gpGT

Oh, I know that, it would be like putting a big cam in any other vehicle with the uneven, lopy idle, etc. The fact remains that none of these engines have as smooth a torque curve as the rotary engine does. Barring a prohibitively expensive (for now, anyway) system like the one in the BMW 3.2 I6 that continuously varies both valve lift and timing, unevenness of the torque curve is going to be present. I'm not saying that these engines are in any way inferior, but they suffer from one of the drawbacks of a piston engine, just as relatively high fuel consumption is one of the drawbacks of the rotary.

wakeech

:D YES :D

laujesse2

They tested the renesis in a "stretch" miata... I would like to see what this engine would do in that car. I've seen NA FC engines in them and those are strait up scary fast. Imagine a tweeked renesis.

8_wannabe

I wouldn't say they are necessarily piston-centric but more like wankel-phobic. Put another way, we could call it "rotor-envy."

But freud aside, no one has stated the obvious (which is Mazda's storyline all along): The 8 simply wouldn't be possible with a piston engine. The space savings they achieved with the Renesis made it possible to come up with a cabin configuration that seats four in a car about the size of a 911. A larger, higher-mounted engine would have resulted in an impossibly small rear seat. Plus, I love the sound of that engine both at hi- and low-revs!

Efini 8

having something 90% of the other people do not have. be original and look good doin it

civic to 8

To me its got to b the red line of 9K