u guys think maybe other car companies will make their own rotary powered vehicles, the chevy ss looks like an rx-8 too,
mayge gm will make their own rotary powered vehicles

 

I don't think many companies want to spend the money on developing a whole new type of engine. It took Mazda many years and a lot of hardship to finally get the engine right. This may be stereotypical, but American car companies love their huge displacement engines. Look at the Viper it has an 8.3 liter engine. Since the rotary engine has small displacement the customers who buy American cars may feel alienated.

 

I don't think so. Like cueball said, the amount of capital needed to start up a new engine program is immense. This is for even familiar piston engines, not to mention a completely new kind of engine.

Also I dont think we want people throwing their hats into the rotary ring- they dont have the experience and will likely tarnish the rotary comeback.

Finally, I dont think other car companies want to give Mazda money, since Mazda has the global patent on rotary engines and all. :D

 

Didn't Mercedes-Benz make a rotary powered car a while back or am I confusing that with a gas turbine engined car.

 

I am not 100% sure, but I think they and several other companies attempted it. They gave up due to the difficulty and expense.

 

Well yes as a matter of fact MB did build a rotary test bed, the C-111 in the late 1960s. http://www.autospeed.co.nz/A_1253/pa...rc=suggestions

The rotary engine was a brainchild of Felix Wankel - the idea having come to him in a dream, or so the story goes.

NSU, who Wankel worked for at the time, were the first to use it in a production vehicle. (IIRC it was placed in a model called Spider, later, and more successfully, in the Ro80).

Wankel managed to license the rights to develop the rotary to a number of comapnies including Curtiss-Wright and, of course, Toyo Kogyo.

Quick, name two American cars that were supposed to have rotary engines. (answer below).

Several US companies played with rotaries including GM, American Motors and Ford. Ford actually had a CW RC2-60 rotary in a Mustang in the mid-sixties.

The two production cars that should have received Wankels, but didn't, were the AMC Pacer and the Chevy Monza.

 

I think the rotary is now public domain. Mazda may now have new patents on stuff they have changed on the RENISIS, but I'm not sure on that. I read somewhere that the patents ran out 5 or so years ago.