The Only GM Car Powered By a Production Rotary Engine

Put this in its own thread to get more reads.

Any thoughts, ASH8 ?

 

Never heard about those ... what a terrible car that must have been .

 

Yep the old Mazda Roadpacer about 1975 from memory, made in my home state at the local GM (Holden) Elizabeth (suburb named after Queen Liz) plant, now closed late last year.

Eliazbeth is in my state Northern suburbs, very working class sort of a mini Detroit (very mini), **** hole basically....nah it is OK, was built in the early 60's with mainly POMS (UK immigrants) and opened by our Queen Elizabeth.
Australia is still part of the Commonwealth (the real one, term Commonwealth is a league of Nations).

Based on the Holden HZ Kingswood (the car before the Commodore).

Mazda basically bought the body shells from Holden (GM) including all the interiors, crated to Mazda Japan and 'refinished' by Mazda with a 13B Rotary installed, only sold in Japan, I think about 1000, a few made it back to Australia as second hand cars in recent times.

Was a gutless HEAVY wonder with atrocious fuel economy.

 

Thanks ASH8 for filling in the blanks for us on this story.

 

Pffff, you think this thing is too heavy for a 13B? How cute.

How about a small bus with 13B?

 

Thanks UnknownJinX, never knew about this 13b truck.

 

Oh yeah, they had that too. There was a time when Mazda tried to shove rotaries into everything.

The pickup was actually included in the rotary 50th Anniversary pictures. It is the teal green one in the middle towards the back.

 

Yes I am old enough to remember the truck. A Delaware RX8Club member is restoring one.

Back in the late 70's, when i lived with friends in a shared house in East Northport, Long Island, NY. We had among us one RX3, two RX4s, one Cosmos, one RX7 , and one Ford truck. My two cars I owned at that time were a RX4 sedan, and a first generation RX7.