RotaryEvolution

iTrader: (30)

i ask myself this question almost daily. "why didn't mazda offer tiers of performance?" we all know the the stock kegs can withstand up to and beyond 500 wheel horsepower without any modification and the turbo drivetrain can easily take a buttload of abuse. so why didn't they offer a true sports car that had a bigger turbo and bigger fuel system? they could have easily blown anything else out of the water even 20 years ago with a 320 brake horsepower street car that still is behaved and is fully emissions legal.

it still boggles me why they take baby steps with the cars regardless of the issue of reliability because the cars and engine can take it. a hybrid T04 turbo can easily come close to 300 wheel horsepower even with a catalytic converter and still be well within the safety buffer for pump gas but why didn't they? the answer still eludes me. they could have breathed life into these engines and made them popular by demand, unfortunately they chose not to. the twin turbo FD was their last stand and still could have been refined further in performance by increasing air volume.

you can't build a rotary car to drive like a piston powered car but they continued to try their hardest to mimic the power feel from a roll and stop, it has hindered these cars far too long. i love the feel of my turbo when it hits 10PSI and climbs from there, even the stock turbo really puts the stock boost level in it's place when you crank it up, even if it does peeter out at 14.

the only question i ask now after building these cars is: "how will the tire manufacturers keep up?" seriously though, people keep cranking more power out and the new trick is trying to use the power. i do feel like a crack dealer with all the options to increase peformance because i know once you start to modify the car's performance that a person won't stop until their wallet tells them to. it's like living at disneyland everytime you go for a drive and trying to see how far you can suck your *** back into the seat and get a light headed feeling.

once you know a rotary engine well enough you can paste it together to run with a stick of gum and some rubber bands, zip ties and silicone(not that i do use the gum ).

jjwalker

It'd be too expensive, nobody would buy them. Plus, the vast majority have no experience with a rotary powered car and would automatically assume that because it has no power below 3500 rpm, that it was gutless.

Cater to the ignorant, profit from the ignorant.

RotaryEvolution

iTrader: (30)

it wouldn't be more than $1k on the cars price tag, which was even then at the time quite pricey. i still have the window sticker for my car which was $27k in '87, you can probably buy an escalade now with how much that is with inflation.

taken from the inflation calculator:

"What cost $27000 in 1987 would cost $50521.44 in 2008. "

rotary owners really are nothing more than regular people who got into a rotary powered car and loved the feeling of the engine. so why would anyone else think the loss of a little low end power isn't a tradeoff for massive top end power? these are sports cars... least i thought they were. course it is that backwards mentality that mazda probably adopted back then too. "lets make a sheep car for the sheep", 'cept i'm not a sheep and i don't think many people like to be either.

Evil Aviator

The 1980s were about image. The main selling point in a sports car at that time was a sporty-looking car with a luxury interior and just enough pep to make you happy for a few seconds. I am pretty sure that all of the required high-hp modifications would have made the car unaffordable to most customers, and anybody who had that kind of money back then would prefer a Porsche, Ferrari, or other image-enhancing European sports car as seen on Magnum P.I. or Miami Vice. Also, EFI was in its infancy back then, and factory-produced high-boost cars were unheard of. For example, back then Racing Beat recommended no more than 5psi boost on a turbocharged NA motor.

I think the baby steps method is probably in place due to the potential liability of fixing thousands of cars under warranty. The S4 keg can't take 500whp.

Evil Aviator

No way in Hell. It would have added about $10K.

Jross427

iTrader: (13)

because of the gentlemens agreement all of japan had for a while. it put muzzles on all the cars this may not be so relevant for the fc. look at 2jz as well they can handle a bitch load of power and a r154 will never die, but it only came with 300.

WingsofWar

Well you can say the same thing about many manufacturers not just Mazda. You have take into consideration that much of the industry is driven by the average consumer, not the enthusiasts. During the 80s there was no need for such a rotary car from the factory. A global marketing strategy had not been actualized. What was created was an affordable sports car, nimble, balanced, directed to the average Japanese consumer. If the american market or even a global market was considered more, i am sure that a possible higher performance model would have been considered.

The fashion, trends, marketing, goals, technology, and the availability of those technologies and are far different now than it was then. So i can see how you would come to those questions, but your projecting your 21st century views on the 20th century.

Bwek

iTrader: (4)

It wouldn't last 100,000 km's with a bigger turbo and if it was any one like us that would want to circuit the car it wouldn't last

sure there are a ton of track cars out there but i doubt any of them go any further than 90,000 km's before a rebuild

the car would have to appeal to the masses

Mutaku

I actually do think it comes down to the image. Sure you could crank out more power and people who actually understood their cars and did proper maintenance work on their cars would have no issue. However the world isn't that ideal either right. Imagine some of the **** cars you find for sale because of abuse.

Of course everyone would blame it on rotaries being unreliable. I am sure their were many other reasons as well. Still I do believe that a better, or should I say faster, product could have been produced.

theNeanderthol

iTrader: (1)

My opinion is that car manufacturers think like this... I could be totally off, so correct me if I'm wrong.

Car manufacturers always follow a performance/price kind of set up. If they make a car that performs to a certain standard, even of it doesn't cost them much more, they will always price it to compete with their previous cars of similar performance and competitors cars of similar performance.

For example, if they offered a 300hp beast supercar FC back in the day, they would have priced it along with the supercars of the day. If not it kind of messes up the gentleman's agreement between car manufacturers. That's not to say occasionally one company won't push the envelope a bit and make a slightly cheaper performance car than the others... but they won't make a huge leap. (although I guess the chevy corvette Z06 beating out the european sports cars of 2x the price pushed the envelope a good bit, maybe even killing my argument, but I think for the most part my idea works)

So if the company doesn't see the need to sell a $60,000 sports car, they won't make a $25,000 sports car that competes with its other $60,000 cars (or other's cars) cause they will always price it with their $60,000 cars if it performs similarly. With mazda back then, they probably didn't build it up back then cause they would have to jack up the price (even though it didn't cost them more to make it) to stick with the gentleman's agreement, and then it wouldn't sell.

I turned one of my fb's into an electric car. It was a fun project (although nothing beats the fun of a rotary) and it accelerates like mad. The huge torque lets me do a burnout starting in 5th gear without dumping the clutch(with lame row rolling resistance street tires). although my rotary car is still faster, heh heh.

It kind of got me looking into electric cars that the car companies are planning on making these days. They are mostly basic cars with decent acceleration. The high power lithium batteries they are using and the nice inverters and ac motors that they put in those cars will literally make twice the power they are programed to with VERY little changes to motor cost (besides stronger drivetrain stuff). A tweak of parameters can turn them into very quick cars, but they just don't do it.

They won't make a $20,000 electric chevy that super outperformed their $20,000 gas chevy. No matter what the cost to make either one. They price the cars by performance (and when I say performance I don't only mean power and cornering etc, less money for fuel could also be considered performance, economical performance maybe, ha ha). And they consider the luxury of spending less money on fuel a good reason to charge a bit more than a gas car of similar acceleration.

If they tweaked their little car to perform like the tesla electric sports car, even if it didn't cost them much more than their economy version of the car, they would probably price the car close to the tesla.

-Six-

iTrader: (10)

It's always about price/costs, mfg. are about selling cars for maximum profit. As such everything in the car is a compromise between cost to build and what target market they are trying to sell to. They probably could make a world beater rx-7 from the factory, but the cost would be so high you would have people looking at the rx-7 and comparing it to a Porsche or Ferrari...something Mazda could not rightly compete with from a selling stand point, would not want to compete with because it is not their target audience. As it stands, the FC represented a pretty impressive performance for your dollar value at the time. You can't look at it from the standpoint of "I can put $5000 into the car and make it a monster", because it does not take into account all of the R&D that goes into that, as well as the cost of materials involved.

arghx

iTrader: (3)

A couple things come to mind

1) ECU technology. The series 4 didn't even have a boost control solenoid. The injector staging was more sophisticated on the FD with the secondary injectors being larger than the primaries.

2) It costs more time to develop and certify multiple engine configurations. By the time of the series 5 I'm sure there just wasn't the budget to do it

3) 182hp/torque was a SHITLOAD back then for a car of that weight. Think about it... Integra, 300zx, Starion, were all slower cars. The T2 blew everything out of the water in 86. Read some of those old magazine articles that are floating around. The automotive press thought it was a rocket

4) You've already pointed out the tire issue. Tires sucked back then, and stock tires weren't even Z rated (only R1 FD tires were Z rated)

5) Turbos and rotary engines both had a reputation for a lack of low end torque. That's why Mazda went through all that trouble in their design of the hot side plumbing. I bet the original 12A turbo was criticized for being laggy and that was rated for something like 160hp.

clokker

iTrader: (2)

In addition to the above mentioned points, also consider that the late eighties/early nineties was the beginning of the minivan/SUV era and nothing spells "PROFIT" like tarting up a truck platform with leather and power windows and convincing soccer moms that they'll be safer in it.

Why bother developing a niche market sports car with an engine that's mostly perceived as "weird" instead of "wonderful", when you can sell a shitton of mediocre rugrat transporters at a much higher profit margin?

Furthermore, the Japanese have always been at a disadvantage regarding the perception of their sports cars.
Because they sprung from companies best known for reliability/quality people always expected even the highest performance Japanese sports cars to act like Civics when it came to maintenance/cost.

European sports car owners almost revel in the absurd prices they pay for parts/labor while the RX7 owner would have a heart attack if his oil filter cost more than $10.
Lamborghini owners are unfazed to discover that a 3000 mile service includes disassembling the whole damn car from the passenger cabin back and dropping the engine.
A contemporary RX7 buyer would balk at $200 for a full service, mainly because that's about what their Corolla cost.

Break an axle on a Ferrari and it's "Oh well, you gotta pay to play"- break one on the RX7 and it's civil class action lawsuit time.

"Halo" cars like the RX7 were never Japan's bread and butter...they played when they felt like it but there wasn't any pressure since the real money lay elsewhere.

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

The FD was already a step up, and it tanked because of price, reliability and so on. There's a reason there are more NAs on the road than turbos.

Mazda does have its share of concept cars and race cars with crazy engines.

theNeanderthol

iTrader: (1)

Well put. What he said.

rotary_bünta

iTrader: (3)

im new to the rotary world, but i think even tho i have a stock 13b n/a that a better clutch or flywheel could make up for some of the lost low end power. no?

1SWEET7

iTrader: (1)

Bottom line it comes down to the profit margin. That's it. Why do you think GM pulled production of it's EV1 in the early '00s, it's because it wouldn't have made as much money as a car you have to replace stuff on all the time. It also has a lot to do with public perception as well. If Mazda really cared they would have made the RX8 the car it should have been, 3 rotor with a turbo.

ZoominFD

^^ Exactly. It's kind of like how they sell PC's today. Within 6 months, the brand new one you bought is already outdated. Manufacturers keep adding more RAM/bigger processors/better technology little at a time.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

1. EVERY review you read in a magazine says something about weak low end tq. and mazda ALWAYS tries to fix it.

2. safety. have you driven a mazdaspeed miata? its the laggiest turbo car ever, they obviously don't think you could handle 150hp @3000rpms.

i'm also old enough to hear all the stories about people crashing the FD's on test drives and stuff.

3. 182hp was corvette level power at the time. 182hp/2800lbs vs 230hp/3200lbs

4. like the rx2/3 before it, the ability to be the fastest thing on the street is a piece of pipe away. rx2/3 with a header is 130hp/2200lbs vs a transmaro 3600lbs/180hp...

nycgps

iTrader: (4)

Nobody, even Mazda themselves know that the car can handle *X* amount of HP.

and remember, Warranty cost is a BIG issue for all manufactures.

They cant just go ahead and push all their cars to the Max.

Also, when something breaks, even its free under warranty, tow and everything, will still give the company a bad name. So ALL company will try to avoid them as much as possible.

DeMoe Aurelius

iTrader: (4)

Has any one ever thought of insurance stand point??? Make a 300 hp FC in 1986 how would we act??? Mustangs had like 200 or so in the 5.0 GT (dont Quote me I hate 85% of US cars).. But **** load of torque I've seen my share of those wrapped around light poles as a kid so just imagine. 300 hp Rotary's d.d. stock and of coarse they would get modded so death toll would been high. Besides we all know that the cars are de-tuned from factory so modding it up till we get all out of it before blowing it is the fun of it!!! OR AM I WRONG???

jackhild59

iTrader: (7)

Emissions, Fuel Economy, Warranty, Reliability, Reputation all played an important roll.

Something else that you are all missing: The Japanese manufacturers were struggling to remain cost competitive due to currency exchange. Late 80's to early 90's the USD to Yen exchange rate got out of control. Japanese import items rose dramatically in cost due to the strong yen/weak dollar. Manufacturing margins were quickly eaten away, because retail price could not just float upwards. This is why Mazda 'decontented' the S5-to reduce costs so the car could remain affordable. Japanese manufacturers without a major US manufacturing presence were at a very difficult disadvantage. One of the best moves Honda ever made was building the plant in Marysville, OH in 1982. They were ahead of the curve.

Currently, the same thing is happening. The yen has not been stronger vs the dollar since 1995.


Headline from 1987:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagot...N&pqatl=google

Headline from 2009:
http://wardsauto.com/ar/yen_rethink_export_091228/

DeMoe Aurelius

iTrader: (4)

Thats one hell of a reason also!!!

Racedog

iTrader: (1)

Mass production, standardization, profit margin.

farberio

iTrader: (7)

Someone needs to put a huge S4 pride under this quote.