Tomorrow will be a remarkable day. Mazda will reveal its next big launch to us on a day that, in some ways, and perhaps in other circumstances, we have been waiting for many years. The rotary engine returns to Mazdaalthough in a very different format from the one we were able to enjoy until a decade ago and, definitely, very oriented to the times.
At the moment, there are few details that we know about this new rotary engine. Although Mazda has seen fit to introduce us to the image of a new logo with which Mazda will differentiate the product, or products, that use this new rotary engine.
A new logo that, with complete certainty, will evoke very good sensations to the majority of motor lovers.
The new logo for the Mazda newspaper
It is possible that an uninitiated viewer will see on it a stylized shield, with marked vertices and a kind of letter e with orange borders in the center. But that spike-shaped shield is nothing more than one of the essential components and the basis of the concept of operation of the rotary engine imagined by Felix Wankel a century ago.
Mazda has designed an emblem, in the shape of a rotor, exactly like the one that will be used by the rotary engine that Mazda will use again in its cars starting this year.
Let’s remember that Mazda’s idyll with the rotary engine dates back to the sixties, when the former Toyo Kogyo, now Mazda, turned its attention to the mechanical ingenuity designed by Felix Wankel, which in 1963 would materialize in the mechanics of a sports coupe, the Mazda Cosmo Sport. Since then, Mazda’s rotary engines have won Le Mans (in 1991), and have been present in different products, and sports cars that, like the Mazda RX-8, are considered cult cars.
And what will Mazda’s new rotary engine be like?
Tomorrow we will leave doubts about the technical details of the new Mazda rotary engine. For years, Mazda has been working on different solutions that could give a new life to the rotary engine, such as hydrogen, or the range extender. And the latter is the one that has been chosen for this new project that, according to Mazda, will result in a Mazda MX-30 that will function as a plug-in hybrid.
So that its batteries can be recharged to function as a purely electric car – which is how it is marketed at the moment – but it can also refuel gasoline so that its rotary engine recharges the batteries, working as a generator, to be able to undertake trips of long distance without stopping to recharge batteries and compensate for the modest electric autonomy of this car.
The advantages, a priori, of the rotary engine for a range extension function are many, starting with its compact size and its performance at constant revs. Tomorrow we may learn more about how Mazda has managed to solve the many technical challenges of putting a new rotary engine on the road.
