https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...hreadid=138112

Just looking for what production vehicles had rotaries in them with the years they were produced. Thanks.

 

in this rx-8 preview mini-disk i sent away for it tells the entire history of the rotary engine starting back in the 60's or something. its got like a little timeline of each year with detailed moving pics of both wenkel and renessis(sp).

--eric

 

So can you get a list or no?

 

go to the mazdausa website and then go to the video or downloads section, i dont know which one it was but it shows the timeline there.

 

The local newpaper has a little trivia factoid in the auto classifieds everyday. Yesterdays was that the AMC Pacer was actually intended to be rotary powered but that idea was scrapped somewhere along the line. I'm not proud of that fact, just thought it was interesting.

Chris

 

Theere was the NSU Spider made from 1964 thru 67. NSU Ro-80, built in Germany. In 1964 Mazda introduced the Cosmo, their forst Rotary powered car. The Mazda R-100 came out in 1969. The R-130 was a Japan only car in late 1969. RX-2 ame out in 1970.
The Citronen M-35 came out in 1970
The Medcedes Benz C-111 Mk1 came out in 1969 too, it is a 3 rotor 3.6 liter made 350 hp. The 1970 Mk2 made 400 hp. The C-111 never went into production.
The Ford Mustang RC2-60, it was just an experimental vehicle.

There have been rotary powered military vehicles, boats, planes, helicopters, buses.

 

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

 

Know of any good pics for the r-100, mk1 & mk2? Thanks.

 

anyone read about the original corvette being built to fit the first rotory? i read that the first vette was gonna be rotory..but they decided against the poor efficiency/wasted gas and basically bad emmisions that the rotory of that time had. supposedly they were all go up until a few months before production then they just dropped it out of the blue.

how awesome would that have benn? i can only imagine!!

 

Dont think so. The first Vette was made in 53.


Chevy toyed with the 4 rotor idea in 73. Youre right about the emissions part though.

 

Chevrolet actually tried its hands at the rotary and it failed with them so bleh. Actually you might find out that alot of the automakers actually tried to use the rotary engine but just thought to bad of it and junked it...Thank you mazda for sticking through it.

 

No that is incorrect. GM was using the rotary for reasons of better fuel efficency and lower emissions than the V8 and V6 motors of the time.

If not for the invention of the Cat all GM (and most other auto manufactures) high HP vehicles would have been rotary.

The invention of the dreaded catylitic converter allowed GM (and ford and Chyrsler, etc) to continue with production of the V8 motors and meet the lower emissions requirements of the US Federal and Californian governments.

You need to remember that all auto manufactures had to meet the emissons mandates of the early 70's with very very in-efficent and very dirty V8 motors, Because the would not be allowed to sell in the USA without lowering the emissions. The rotary was the simplist solution of the time.

So don't blame the rotary engine for being dirty... it was radically cleaner than the majority of the motors in the 60's and 70's. It was so clean that production rotaries didn't even need a true cat until the early eighties, unlike the big domestic V8 and V6 (and even 4 cyl) motors that had been required to use them since the very early '70s.

 

Again this is incorrect. GM's rotary product was great. The Vega was designed with the 3 rotor motor from the start.

GM made the rotary work just fine, it was just cheaper to continue production of the V6 and V8 motors once the cat converter was designed.

 

its been a long time since i read the original article so who knows but my take from it was that the first true cat was made by the mazda rotory project. i remember them stating that the rotory cat converter "revolutionized"..and was the first idea of its time.

whatever the case is its all very interesting to me!! and to be to the point i wouldnt bet any money against icemarks info..im afraid that most of the time you or i would lose that bet!! ill just save the money to put it into my vert!!

good post though

 

There's an excellant book called "Wankel" which contains much information about Felix Wankel and the early rotaries. Definitly worth the trip to the library.

 

The book I have is called "The wankel engine" written by Jan P Norbye. Published by the chilton book company. It is chilton number 5591.