Mazda’s rotary engine returns, although not as we knew it until now, and under an application in keeping with the times. In any case, it is a good time to remember a legendary story, which we already had the opportunity to tell you about six years ago, more present than ever at this time. An updated story, of course, to the latest news from Mazda. Y a great legend of how the rotary engine became one of the great hallmarks of the Hiroshima brand.
Mazda’s passion for the rotary engine is a story of honor, loyalty and justice.. The honor of achieving something great, which is always appreciated in an industry in which the possibilities seem to be reduced to the model imposed by large manufacturers and, at least due to its production volume and economic capacity, Mazda is not.
Mazda’s loyalty to its customers, who still yearn for the return of the rotary engine, and to its own employees, who are once again honored to be doing something great. The justice that Mazda has to give to one of the technologies that has generated the most satisfaction in those of Hiroshima. The legend of the Mazda rotary engine is, for many reasons, the legend of the 47 samurai (the 47 rōnin).. The legend of the 47 engineers who brought an exciting project to life, for Mazda, and for the entire industry. And the legend of the 47 engineers who worked, and still continue to do so, so that this dream, in no less complex times for the Felix Wankel enginebe fulfilled.
The legend of the 47 rōnin and Mazda’s first rotary engine
If the figure was inaccurate, we should blame Mazda for it, which perhaps to perpetuate the legend prefers to remember it in this way. Be that as it may, Mazda remembers how 47 young engineers fought like samurai to create the first rotary engine. that would end up in a mass-produced car.
The number is no less important. Kenichi Yamamoto himself, head of development at Mazda, and considered one of the fathers of the rotary engine, referred to those 47 young people as the Shijyu Shichi Shithe 47 samurai, the 47 rōnin (see Wikipedia), who for justice, in defense of their honor, and in one of the greatest displays of loyalty and Bushido, avenged the life of their lord, even assuming the fatal consequences that this would imply.
Felix Wankel posing with his ingenious rotary engine.The Felix Wankel Engine
At the beginning of the sixties, the former Toyo Kogyo, now Mazda, proposed to advance in a very complex, post-war situation, standing out from the rest of the manufacturers, foreign and local, with a transgressive technology that everyone wanted. there in Germany, a prodigy named Felix Wankel had envisioned from a very young age the idea of an internal combustion engine based on a rotary motionwithout pistons, and in this he had devoted all his efforts in the years after the First World War.
The German industrial machinery of those years would facilitate the research and development of a technology that would ultimately be desired by the entire automobile industry. The Second World War stopped those advances, and his work for the German war industry, and his affiliation with the National Socialist party would even cost him to end up in prison after the arrival of the Allies.
In the years of the reconstruction of Germany, the NSU Motorenwerkewhich decades later would join Auto Union and form what we know today as Audi, would rescue the project and again lend funds to Félix Wankel to develop its technology.
Mazda’s first rotary engine
With one eye on Germany, Mazda would soon send its engineers to Europe to try to solve the technical problems that prevented the Germans from putting the rotary engine into practice., with a rotor resembling a dorito, or a guitar pick, that Wankel had glimpsed. He, too, would not waste time at home, where a rotary engine development department was established in April 1963.
Kenichi Yamamoto, who until then had directed the new vehicle development project, heads up a team that, as the legend says, and with himself, would add up to 47 engineers in the areas of development, design, experimentation and research. of materials. Mazda recalls that during the team’s first meeting, in a restaurant in Hiroshima, Yamamoto would begin his speech to a team of young engineers with the following words:
Starting tomorrow, our team of 47 engineers should consider this laboratory our home, and the rotary engine should always be in our minds, regardless of whether we are awake or asleep.
Thus was born the legend of the 47 samurai. Mazda’s rotary engine samurai.
Mazda Cosmo Sport.The challenge was huge. But, to everyone’s surprise, they succeeded. And it materialized in 1967 in a sports coupe, the Mazda Cosmo Sportswhich would not only surprise for its technology, but also for its aesthetics.
Beyond the history of the complex development of Mazda’s rotary engine, and the 47 samurai, excuse me, engineers, who carried it out, Mazda’s relationship with the rotary engine, far from the idyllic image that modern spectacular sports cars evoke for us, and the Le Mans victory was complex.
Mazda can boast today of having been the only manufacturer that has carried out mass production of cars with rotary engines, in different ranges, and at very different times. But can boast of it thanks to having fought against the current, overcoming many unforeseen events. The most notable, those referring to pollution regulations.
Mazda would become the first and only Japanese manufacturer to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1991 and would do so with a rotary engine.
Along with oil consumption, which is not derived from a design problem, but from the very concept of the Wankel engine, the high fuel consumption of Mazda’s rotary engines is a subject that practically everyone will continue to know about today. who, one way or another, have heard of these engines.
Mazda was working on different technical solutions to solve this great problem, that of consumption, and emissions, to maintain the rotary engine in its products. And Mazda would get even greater satisfaction than having a legion of lovers of its engines. And we are convinced that also among the engineers of its rival brands.
Satisfactions like win the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans. To this day, no other rotary engine has won at Le Mans (and until 2018 no other Japanese manufacturer would).
In 2015 we knew that, again, 50 engineers, or 47 + 3 samurai, as in the sixties, were working tirelessly to restore the glory of the rotary engine. The one with the rotary engine could well have been Mazda’s best kept secret, or worst kept, depending on how you look at it.. The development team for the new rotary engine, which from Mazda nicknamed as 16X, first, and Skyactiv-R, later, had been working, by then, 8 years on a new engine. Almost a decade in which Mazda, still looking forward to how important the return of the Wankel engine would be, ruled out that it would return, at least in the short term. And a decade in which rumors, with little or no basis, continued to surface periodically.
The problem for these 50 engineers is not much different from the one Mazda has encountered since the launch of the Cosmo Sport.. Emissions imposed, more than ever, the rules in any mechanical development. Above all, Mazda remains a small manufacturer, whose focus in the last decade has been on the viability of its products and, above all, the no less exciting developments that they have carried out in internal combustion engines, somehow swimming against the current. .
Masamichi Kogai, CEO of Mazda, said that this development was a matter of loyalty to his customers and to his employees (see Automotive News), otherwise, he insisted, there would be engineers who would even abandon the brand.
Now, would Mazda end up applying the seppukupassing away with honor after plunging a dagger into its belly, for loyally and justly preserving the future of the rotary engine?
Mazda’s big problem was still that, at least with the technology we know, its rotary engine made no sense as such in the world we live in. At a time when all the manufacturers, the largest and the smallest, have begun to close internal combustion developments, to focus all their investment on the electric vehicle, Mazda has not only worked on the development of diesel engines and gasoline, four and six cylinders, truly innovative, but has also set out to develop a new rotary engine.
During the last decade we have been very attentive to any news that came to us from Mazda regarding its rotary engine. The different projects, prototypes, and even patents filed by Mazda, made us think of two possible scenarios. The first, the return of the rotary engine but this time powered by hydrogen. The second, that it could be used as a generator to power the batteries of an electric car.
From this Friday we can tell you exactly how the new Mazda rotary engine works.
The new era of Mazda’s rotary engine
On January 13, 2023, the new Mazda MX-30 e-Skyactiv R-EV was announced, the first Mazda to use a rotary engine in over a decade. In the absence of many technical details that we are looking forward to knowing, Mazda confirmed that this rotary engine, as we expected, will not be in charge of moving the vehicle, but will only function as a generator to recharge some batteries, taking advantage of the performance of this type of engines at a constant speed and, above all, its compact size.
Mazda has created a plug-in hybrid that can only move thanks to the action of an electric motor, powered by a 17.8 kWh battery, with which it achieves an electric range of 85 kilometers. But, in turn, the rotary engine can generate energy to recharge the battery thanks to a 50-liter gasoline tank, which guarantees that we can travel long distances without having to depend on a network of fast chargers, or plan stops to recharge batteries.
