Did you know that in 1978, "GM" was going to put a four rotor engine in the Corvette. They were going to carry the Wrinkle engine through out all of their high proformance modles. The cancled the project due to the gas shortage (scare) and went with an more convectional piston powered enging which consumed less gas. I just happened to stumble accross this program on SPEED CHANNEL last night and thought i'd share.

 

Considering how ridiculously simple these engines are compared to your average piston pounder, I really can't believe no one else has even attempted using or seriously developing them... If, for example, a company with a budget like Honda decided to pick it up and maybe throw in some hybrid technology they'd easily have a killer app on their hands. And (I hope...) it seems like Mazda has finally proven that a properly-designed rotary can be every bit as durable as some of the best piston engines around.

I wonder if there's a site that has more info on the GM project? I'd love to read up on it.

 

1973 XP-882
Arguably more stunning than the Two- Rotor XP-897GT was the so-called "Four-Rotor Car" that appeared a bit later in 1973. Built on the first XP-882 chassis under the aegis of company design chief Bill Mitchell, it carried a pair of GM's experimental two-rotor engines bolted together into a 420 horsepower "super Wankel." A Corvette-like face and obvious high performance potential were taken as strong suggestions that GM was brewing a radical new Corvette for the late Seventies or early Eighties.



http://www.monito.com/wankel/corvette.html

 

 

Also

DeLorean tried hard to get a two-rotor Wankel engine for his car. Initially he tried to get the rights to GM's mid-engined Wankel Corvette prototypes.

- Motor Trend Sept. 1977

 

Pete, Will you merry me?:p WOW I am sooooo impressed with you right now words can't describe it. How long have you been holding out on us? Here I am thinking I have discovered the holy grail and then you come along and burst my bubbel. Just joking buddy, thats awsome that you know so much about it. The real question is, do you use it as a pick up line in the bar:D

 

Geez, guys... you young punks don't know nothing! :D GM wasn't the only other manufacturer to play with the Wankel engine - at one time in the late 60s and early 70s, almost every major automaker had rotary development projects underway. Aside from the Corvette, the Vega was originally intended to receive a Wankel engine! Over at AMC, the Pacer (lately of Wayne's World fame) was also intended for a Wankel engine. The most famous non-Mazda rotory engine efforts weren't the Corvette show cars (somewhere at home I still have the Road & Track issues with the mid-engine rotary Corvettes on the cover), but were the Mercedes C111 mid-engine test cars. Here's a couple of articles about the Mercedes C111 cars:
http://www.der-wankelmotor.de/index.html
http://www.classicdriver.com/uk/maga...0.asp?id=12151
http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=103&i=6730

Regards,
Gordon

 

Dang! The corvette looks crazy. Looks so symmetrical! You can drive backwards and people would think you're driving forwards.

Heh ... all those articles that Gord posted reminds me of that one post in the multimedia section by Morgan with the Mazda ad saying that in 1980 85% of cars on the road will be rotary.

 

LOL .... I just did a bit of research on the rotary and came up with this ...

About the pickup line ... Thats a good Idea ! :P

 

To answer your question: Yes.
If you really want to go back in history.
do a search for KKM