The guys over at Forbes must have missed the well-selling RX-8 (?)


There's a good reason that rotary engines never really caught on. Rotaries--which run in circles, unlike pistons, which run up and down--are like diesels; they had major problems early in life, creating a buying populace that to this date does not fully trust them. Mazda's RX-2, one of the first rotary-engine cars, had problems with catching on fire. It also raised the classic problems of rotary engines: bad fuel economy and emissions. Rotary seals would wear out early in an RX-2's life, leaking fuel and emissions along the way.

http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/23/cx_...hisSpeed=20000

 

lol what a load of crap. RX2 are sweet.

[img]http//www.images.forbes.com/images/2004/01/23/9_0126feat.jpg[/img]

 

well i tried to fix it but it just does not want to work. matt22

 

What a crock.

- Steiner

 

ya i got some interesting stuff about that. I will try to put it up tomorrow or tonight if i get a chance. Matt22

 

Hey Sonny,

Don't let Forbes or those flakes on Wall Street pollute your rotary common sense Boy! Hope all is well in the Big Apple!

Pops!

 

I remember seeing that awhile ago. With that same reasoning, I guess the FD must really be one of the worst cars ever made. And how exactly do you leak emissions?

They're just rehashing the same crap that every ignorant person says about rotaries, and they needed a car to represent it, so why not the car that introduced Mazda to America and became Motor Trend's Car of the Year as soon as it came out?

 

The original rotary used in the RX2 WAS a bad engine. Mazda had some early teething problems with the rotary at that time, including water jacket seals that leaked around 30,000 miles. (Not enough cooling available to the bottom of the engine--- where the power and exhaust sequence takes place). By the time Mazda corrected this the damage to the rotary's rep had already been done.

And as for fuel economy, at that time everybody who knew jack **** about the correlation of fuel burn and horsepower figured that a small car should always = good fuel economy. They seemed to forget that the RX2 smoked the doors off its Japanese and American small car counterparts.

But this Forbes list is mostly flawed by the cars that DIDN'T make their list:

Ford Tempo. Bricklin. Dodge Aries. Plymouth Horizon. Chevy Spectrum. Mid- '80s Chevy Nova ("No Go"). '82 to 96 Chevy Cavalier. '93 to '99 Chrysler Neon. Hyundai Pony. Hyundai Excel. Hyundai Sonata. To name just a few. Holy ****, did Forbes ever drop the ball on this one.

 

Ford Tempo. Bricklin. Dodge Aries. Plymouth Horizon. Chevy Spectrum. Mid- '80s Chevy Nova ("No Go"). '82 to 96 Chevy Cavalier. '93 to '99 Chrysler Neon. Hyundai Pony. Hyundai Excel. Hyundai Sonata. To name just a few. Holy ****, did Forbes ever drop the ball on this one. [/QUOTE]

ya id like to know how the tempo and the cavalier missed that list ive personally drove both of those crap buckets around

 

Hey Pops! It's been a long time!

How have you been? Shoot me an email when you've got the chance.

 

ya id like to know how the tempo and the cavalier missed that list ive personally drove both of those crap buckets around[/QUOTE]


the tempo was the first one you listed there. what was so bad about teh horizon? My family has had 5.

 

Laughing, i think it comes down to the fact that at rare times i see someone who i mention i deal with rotary engines they just look at me and say. I thought those things were long gone. Then they get into a story how a friend or someone had one and used to either put new engines all the time, or loved it to death. One thing that is for sure. Ask an ole timmer about the RE and one things comes to mind. THEY WERE FAST!

 

Don't knock the Nova. that was my first car. Had 200,000 miles when i got it. They are good cars. They are actually toyotas. The only thing chevy on that car was the bowtie emblem on the grill...

 

the following came from an Mazda advertisement sometime during or after 74.

 

the tempo was the first one you listed there. what was so bad about teh horizon? My family has had 5.[/QUOTE]
I had one Horizon. One was enough. Even though I knew their rep beforehand, I needed an expendable winter car at the time. I figured that I could live with the known flaws--- poor braking, poor quality items such as door handles, interior components, latches, electricals and the like. Especially for only $200.

What I didn't count on was the bad ignition components going south when I was least prepared, carb icing, shift linkage warpage, door hinges failing, etc. Almost all of the above left me stranded at least once--- three times in sub-zero weather in the middle of nowhere. Even though I perform much of my own maintenance my repair bills for that winter totalled over $1200.

I wasn't too happy with the retarded ergonomics and instrument placement either, but I knew about those beforehand. Oddly enough, the engines in those cars weren't bad at all. Of course, they were made by VW.

 

Congrats on finding a good one. Actually on the grand scale of things they weren't as unreliable as the others mentioned above, and the engines were not the problem.

But most of the ones up here in the land of salted roads were consumed by rust, and they seemed to have poor quality nuisance items like door locks, handles and fittings. But for those familiar with the original Nova (a mid-sized rear-wheel-drive American-built car--- in the days when domestic manufacturers still built good cars) the later Nova was a major let-down. Most found it ugly, under-powered and destined for unusually-rapid depreciation.

This car did for (to?) the original Nova what the '74 4-cylinder Mustang did to the '68 Mustang Fastback. Enthusiasts all screamed a collective "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

 

the rx2 was my first car and i put 80,000 + HARD miles on it and never had a problem!!
sure it started to use a fair bit of oil by the time i sold it but i had to do nothing to the motor,
other than spark plugs and points!
the guy i sold it to drove it for years before it died.
Forbes doesn't know their *** from their elbow!

matt

 

I remember reading some old teardown reports on an R100 (Predecessor to the RX2) at 80,000 miles. Wear was minimal. The problem was that a large enough percentage of these cars were having failures at as little as 30,000 miles that it couldn't be explained away as just a minor glitch or owners who didn't maintain them. Other cars at the time typically lasted at least 80,000 to 100,000 miles with few exceptions.

Again, Mazda fixed this early on. But in a time period where "May-ud In Jer-pay-un" (dumb redneck fucktard speak for "Made in Japan") was a popular catch phrase meaning poor quality, coupled by a general population pre-disposed to hating imports, this problem gave them an excuse to jump on the anti-rotary band wagon that many of these buffoons just couldn't pass up.

Even today we still run into these embeciles and have to deal with their uninformed bullshit.

 

I took out a apex seal in a rx2 with low miles on it, but that was the result of over rev
it still ran ok but i am sure a bit of the carbon seal went out the exhaust, so i guess
if new owners thought the rotary engine could be reved to 10,000 all day long i guess
they had problems early on.

matt

 

That wouldn't surprise me. Neither would clueless new owners who figured that since they had to add oil every so often it wasn't necessary to do an oil change. Ever. And then there are the true idiots who never even open up the hood. I'm guessing it would take about 5000 miles before the oil supply was depleted to the point where the rotors received inadequate cooling and the water jacket seals cratered.

Either way, Mazda had to do something to make the car more idiot-proof. And they succeeded.

 

Not to mention Vega (any), Pinto, Mustang II, I had all those POS too and they all had HUGE problems, the Mustang II was junk at about 75K miles and was parted out it was sooooo bad.

 

the rx2 was the car mazda got sued over, they also ended up having to replace a TON of engines under warranty. even now you still see new rx2/3 crate motors on ebay, they were warranty engines.

mazda had someone do a study to see if removing the 3rd rotor oil seal was a good idea, the study said it wasnt but mazda did it anyways.

the car might be just fine, but it almost put them out of buisness, thats why its on the list

 

Actually, the Vega did make Forbes' list, as did the Pinto. The Mustang II (even with the 4-banger, same 2300cc unit used in the Pinto) wasn't necessarily unreliable, even though a few proved to be lemons. It was merely gutless and (due to the unrefined emission crap of the era) balky and tempermental under hard acceleration. Fit and finish was typical '70s domestic crap.

The C4 automatic transmissions were nothing to write home about either, but the rest of the drive train was ok--- especially compared to front-wheel drive cars produced by the big three a few years later.

Rust was also a problem, but the biggest issue with those cars was the butt-ugly redesign--- kinda like taking a supermodel, getting her fat and then throwing acid in her face.

A better car from Ford at that time was the Maverick/ Comet. They weren't quite as ugly and were reliable and built to last. The ones that weren't consumed by rust did just that.

 

You are so right, my best friend had a Maverick and that thing was always there for you and ready to go, he had that thing for what seemed like forever and it was like the Energizer Bunny, just kept going and going...

 

i think the list is funny, cause i have two RX2s and i am gonna buy a Ford Bronco2 soon. SO i be damned if i just dont like the worst cars of all time.