The rx8s loss in sales was directly related to the economy and nothing else.

 

Haha wow. Thank you for that insight Rotary Resurrection (had to go back and make sure you were indeed Resurrection and not Evolution)

I can sadly say I know exactly where you are coming from, though in fields other than rotary. It sure doesn't take much to ruin something great. I could turn this into a discussion of philosophy but this isn't the place and no one cares anyway. I sincerely hope there is that one (or more) person who truly appreciates your efforts and makes it all worth it. If not well, I can respect what you do.

 

fixed that post for you...

 

I thought about quoting the whole post and leaving it in the hopes even more people might read it again.

Truer words have never been spoken. I've been around these cars since 1999 too and have noticed all of that take place as well. It is truly disheartening to see so many good cars turned into junk over the last decade. The mentality of most FC owners just is not where some of us wished it would be. In a few years, these cars will be next to impossible to restore due to lack of parts. Not to mention all the really good examples are nearly gone anyway.

I can only hope there is a subculture of FC owners that avoid the Internet that have nice mostly stock or lightly modded cars sitting in their garage in hiding. Sadly, I doubt this is true.

I get lots of good feedback on my restoration thread and I hope that a few more people will go in that direction as opposed to completely cutting them up for, in my opinion, no good reason. I'm not one to tell people what to do with their car and their money, but that doesn't mean I have to understand why they do it.

 

lol, how is that different from BMW/Mercedes? the BMW dealer service department has dead cars everywhere, and it goes around the block, yet people still buy those turds

 

If it gives you all any hope, my recent purchase (after only about a month and a half of searching) was exactly such a car.

'86 GXL with only 81k original miles. Properly stored, EXCELLENTLY taken care of (original paint and interior look brand new), bone stock save for a Racing Beat exhaust and K&N filter. Absolutely beautiful car. I'm sure these cases are few and far between, but they do indeed exist, and I was lucky enough to find one with relative ease.

Now I'm going to bring it home, slam it to the ground, install camber plates at a 45 degree angle, spray paint the rims bright neon pink, throw a giant GT wing on the back and leave it out in the sun to rot :P

 

Because those people have enough money that when it comes out of warranty or lease they will just get another one and not worry about the long term effects. They also don't have to worry about the cost of fuel or maintenance. They just write the check and move on.

 

I love rotary engines. They taught me a lot. I also love history, and it has also taught me a lot.

The rotary engine financially destroyed NSU, the original developer of the engine. That's partly why VW was able to buy it up in the 60s and make it a part of what became the modern incarnation of Audi. Audi kept the Ro80 rotary sedan into production for a few years, and kept researching a new rotary. They even had Audi 100 prototypes running around in the late 70s with a new generation rotary closer in design to what Mazda was running at the time.

The rotary engine also almost destroyed Mazda in the 1970s. The mass market rotaries were fine until fuel economy became an issue. Then those became a disaster. Every low volume niche product they made with them cost the company a gazillion dollars (3 rotor Cosmo, 3rd gen Rx-7). Only the high volume stuff did ok/good financially (1st gen Rx-7), and they still dropped the ball on Rx-8 reliability issues.

Let this be a lesson to all those peddling "revolutionary" ideas for combustion engines. NSU licensed the rotary to about a dozen major OEMs including Toyota and GM. None of them could figure out the rotary engine for the long term. Now Mazda has called it quits because they don't want history to repeat itself, and with the state of the global economy I can't say I blame them. The longer it stays out of production, the more likely it will never come back because of the risks involved.

I'll have to pour one out for the Wankel though. It had a good run.

 

Holy cow, i had all but written off interesting threads on this forum. Finally one popped up...

Great stuff Rotary.......tion brothers and other regulars. Fun read, I have nothing to add, you guys summed it all up pretty well.

I've considered working on these things as more than a hobby or more than for good friends and yet every time I sit down and crunch numbers or think about liability/risk vs reward it all adds up to "don't quit your day job".

You guys forgot one thing about the RX-8. It's horribly ugly. Ive been near pulling the trigger on probably half a dozen 8s over the past few years. In the end, i just hate the look of them. Even the R3 is just a polished turd aesthetically.

I think I would enjoy having a beer with a few of you guys though...

EDIT: Ive delt with RX-8s in the racing scene quite a bit. They were even worse in that arena. How one car could have such an amazing chassis for racing yet such a terrible engine.... The only company that could build a renesis that would last an entire race weekend without munching a side seal or losing compression for some other unknown reason, besides mazda, was speedsource. And even they i think replaced more engines than they cared to admit. (I'm referring to their koni challenge cars not the rolex cars that were about as close to an RX-8 as a formula1 car is...) The 09+ motor seemed to be better (lasting 2-3 weekends as long as it still used the OMP) but still was not financially viable for any club effort...

 

+1

there will always be diehard rotary guys and i used to be one of them, i still enjoy making the engines better but there has always been inherent flaws to the designs and one huge hurdle, compression leakage.

the engines are inefficient and consume more fuel than any piston engine counterpart. the only real benefit of the engine is it's ability to rev freely without constriction.

if i had never began this business i probably could have easily overlooked those flaws because the engines are easy to overhaul and the major components can be reused multiple times unlike piston engines pistons/cylinders.

mazda had its ups and downs but overall they made something work that no one else in the world could even after chucking millions of dollars at the engine designs.

the 3 and 4 rotor engines have a harmonious sound to them and honestly i think they should have taken the engine and built more top end cars with the designs, instead of the fuel hog, lacking low end, turbocharged, unreliable cars we end up with. even if i could never have afforded one it would have had a more meaningful place in my heart in the longrun than seeing the cars become valueless and a cheap thing for kids to tinker with as soon as they get their licenses.

take a boinger and throw the same parts onto it and it will make more power and give better fuel economy, the end.

as it stands the only reason to drive a rotary car is for the uniqueness aspect and it bothers me that people still drive that into the ground by ghetto-ing their cars out. but that will happen when the reliability takes its toll and the cars turn up with the same blue book value as a 1989 toyota tercel.

 

I'd love to throw out that it's a great race motor, which it is. Except in the NASA enduro arena we are constantly getting our asses handed to us by 944s and spec miatas because we end up having to stop twice as much for twice as long (each stop) to fuel...

And this is without a giant hair drier on the passenger side of the engine...

 

the other benefit of building and tuning a rotary is, once you have that knowledge you could build just about anything.

 

THIS.

I had limited mechanical knowledge when I started working on 7s. By the time I had figured all that out, I found that just about anything else someone brought to me was cake by comparison.

 

i drive by the new Shelby plant here in vegas every day. some days i look at the building and just want to stop in and drop off a resume.

what do you think a twin turbo + supercharged V8 could do? hmmm. there's concepts i could employ that the rotary would barely tolerate.

unfortunately everyone else in the world thinks we're whack jobs without any real mechanical experience.

 

Give it a shot. You never know. It may be they recognize someone who has take the time to understand a concept as unorthodox as the Wankel has to be capable of something useful

 

Long live the Rotary!!!

 

That. was. SO. Awesome.


Then whats the ******* problem here? They have money. They make money. I stand by my word, they are being limp dicks and forgetting the whole "Horse and rider as one" ... Once Toyota starts making a stable of sport cars... Mazda will be screwed because they WONT STAND UP TO THEIR ORIGINAL BELIEFS THAT GAVE BIRTH TO THE MIATA, and practically changed history.

You must not have seen my car. Im one of those people. I stay off the net for the most part.




I keep reading the same thing: Its been fun. The game is over.
The car that got me into cars will now get me out of cars.
Time to start looking for a wife and minivan?

 

To a degree, yes, anyone dealing directly with the public on a daily basis will have many of these same issues and feelings about people in general. But rotary people seem to be worse in every respect. They are almost always extreme in some way or another. Extreme in their cheapness, or their wish to rig stuff up instead of doing a normal repair, or in their wish to go fast and raise hell at the expense of everything else, or in their willingness to try every possible solution to a problem except the most obvious and common one (i.e. denial over a blown engine, etc.). Extreme in their willingness to spend 1500 bucks on a set of wheels and tires when their stockers were in fine condition, yet totally unwilling to consider 70 bucks to fix that groaning rear wheel bearing or find out why their heater does not work at all because it doesn't help them shift mad quicker y0.

There are some WIERD ***** driving rotaries, for real, and rarely are they rational, well adjusted members of society. My wife and all of our family members have commented on this when they've been around car meets or guys that come over to get work done or buy parts. A few years back one of the nearby houses changed hands, and the new neighbors thought that I was a drug dealer because of the cars that go in and out, and the shady people that came and went (plus the fact that I had some nice cars of my own but did not come and go to work daily). Then eventually she noticed car parts and engines coming and going and realized that I worked at home and it was all legit.

I have come to the conclusion that this profile is pretty much a requirement for a person willing to own such an unreliable and inefficient piece of equipment, and actually enjoy the experience.

 

Very true. I've bought several rx7's over the years and I felt like something was off about most of them.
That being said, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and everyone at the Toyota plant I work at comment on how weird I am. Maybe this is why so many people cling to an unorthodox engine? Because it resembles them in a way? Community college psych 101;

 

I've owned an 87 Porsche 944 and I've been daily driving an 01 325ci for six months now. I actually loved both of them. Drove my 944 off a hillside and then hammered it to death. My BMW is alright but it seems to always have an electrical problem. Luckily my 5 years of rx7 ownership made me in to a master mechanic.

 

So true, but it comes with depreciation and lower prices. When we purchased the S5 TII new, $28,000 there was certainly a different ownership group. Same with our Acura TL, new in '04 it was $35,000, but now with the lower prices, you see them scraping the ground with about -10 camber, stretched tires, loud exhaust, different color hood/roof, and run into the ground with complaints of trans/engine problems.

Have had rotaries since '82 ('79 Limited), the little engine is a PIA. The FC electrical problems, S4 with high fuel tank temps, trailing plugs not firing, the S5 with the OMP that takes the ecu along with it when it decides to go south, the FD problems, and no need to speak of the RX8.

In '89 it was our choice over other competitors and is still a great looking car, enjoy taking it out every once in a while, but other than what people call an unique engine with little torque, would rather have a piston powered vehicle that is more reliable, easily modified with longer life.

Mazda just can't get it right!

 

But that's what makes Mazda, Mazda. It's like a little kid on a bike giving you the finger as he peddles by, then it breaks and he crashes. The point is, in that brief moment of victory he felt like a winner.

 

Hahaha nice analogy

 

That's the grin I get when I am driving mine past other cars in corners. Knowing that corner could be my engines last, yet still not caring because of the way the car makes me feel while driving it.

 

lmao, you should try a honda and report back. unless you like meeting in dark alleys at midnight…


we ran an E46 for a season, and stuff would break in the garage between races. so we'd park it and it was fine, and then a month later go to get it, and the brake lights wouldn't work, or something. we sold it because just the stuff that broke while it was parked was more expensive than the honda.

it didn't help that we had the engineering dept look at it and they just laughed at it, its a remarkably bad design, the BMW, and its astounding it drives so well.


they did, its called the GSL-SE. then the first miata. the FC was too big of a leap from the 1st gen.