Mazda's rotary sports car heritage tested

Mazda Cosmo Sport,
Mazda RX-7 10th Anniversary
Mazda RX-7 FD
Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen

Quick Spin
Mine proving ground, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan

The rotary engine is alive and kicking at Mazda. A new concept, the RX-VISION, was revealed at the Tokyo motor show last week, leading to speculation that a series-production successor to the RX-7/RX-8 could be unveiled within 12 months. Not content with providing a VISION of the future, Mazda also ferried Aussie journalists to its proving ground at Mine (pronounced 'Minay') to let rip in several of its rotary heritage sports cars.

Plenty of journalists from North America and Australia were eager to get their hands on an array of different rotary-engined Mazda sports cars from different eras; and that resulted in lengthy queuing and some sore feelings that not every car could be driven on the day. At least one or two journalists from another country that shall remain unidentified paid little heed to those widely known Australian principles of sharing and 'a fair go'.

There were a couple of cars retired due to mechanical issues, which didn't help matters either. As was noted, these cars have been sitting in storage for a considerable period, and the tyres of one or two were literally decades old, as one example. While I missed out driving the first-generation RX-7 that retired before the day ended, I had driven a Series III model a long time ago, so I had a vague recollection of that car as a road-going machine. As I remember it, that car, from around 1985, was memorable for its drivetrain-related NVH and the sense that there was a lot of power under the long bonnet.

The cars I drove at Mine included those listed above and a ride as a passenger in a rare Eunos Cosmo with a triple-rotor engine. Impressive for its purposeful engine and very well equipped – but not very well fettled dynamically, according to the driver – the Eunos DNF'd with surging power that ultimately disappeared altogether. The car, pulled across to the side of the track half-way through the first lap, did restart, and proceeded at a gentler pace back to the pits. Sadly, more time spent with it would have been appreciated.

While rotaries are not renowned for fuel economy – and a triple-rotor engine would take that fuel gluttony to a new level – the Eunos powerplant was a velvet sledgehammer, highly refined but offering plenty of performance too.

Of the cars driven, only the Cosmo Sport from the late 1960s was not a museum piece. Club owners had kindly brought along their own cars – which are now worth a fortune, we're told – for the international journalists to hammer around the proving ground, formerly a race track.

Cosmo Sport
The Cosmo Sport must have seemed pretty advanced in its day, which pre-dated the first moon landing, the first oil shock and the break-up of the Beatles. Entering the tiny two-seater provided the first hint this was a car designed for a different time and people of a different stature. It's pretty tight climbing in, and it's all too easy to clout the noggin on the cant rail over the door. A Nardi steering wheel – three drilled metal spokes and a thin woodgrain rim and presumably an aftermarket item – measured a massive diameter even for a car without power steering. The wheel felt like it was located about 5cm to the left of ideal, while the pedals were skewed across a similar distance to the right.  The seats were as flat as the Nullarbor Plain and offered next to nothing in the way of support. And how one misses inertial-reel seatbelts when stepping back in time to a period prior to the 1970s.

Before the driver, the large analogue instruments are laid out in a standard sort of array and are easy to read. The parking brake is a vertically-mounted lever on the side of the centre console, very close to the driver's left leg. Most of the controls are familiar to modern drivers who have learnt to drive manuals. The transmission is a standard H-pattern shift with four forward speeds. Because the driver before me forgot to shift to neutral before letting out the clutch pedal, the Cosmo Sport had stalled. Restarting took a few cranks – but not too many, considering this is a 50-year old car without the modern niceties of fuel injection and electronic ignition.

Power delivery felt like a rotary should – a little peaky. But it was not in the same league as the fiery models of RX-7 that followed later. While the rotary must have seemed like a regular screamer at the time, it's still quite well endowed with low-end torque, viewed from a modern perspective. There's none of the usual labouring and vibration one would expect of a piston engine running down to 1500rpm or less in gear. The characteristic rotary buzz was present, rising to a sound like a snarling vibration force-fed through an economy-size Milo tin that had been pop-riveted directly to the body. Out of respect for the owner of this veteran, it wasn't given a hiding around the track, but cornering dynamics were decent for a car from this era, as far as could be ascertained.

What was evident from even one lap around the Mazda proving ground at Mine – formerly a racing circuit that Mazda acquired when it ran out of testing time at its main facility – is that the Cosmo Sport may seem antiquated by modern standards of packaging, ergonomics and equipment, but there's little doubt it was a car ahead of its time in every other way on its release back in the 1960s.

RX-8 Hydrogen
Being a factory test vehicle, the hydrogen-combustion RX-8 also received an easy time from journalists taking it for a spin – especially with a Mazda employee in the right (it was left-hand drive) seat to ensure we didn't get too far ahead of ourselves where the track's speed limits were concerned.

The car ran equally well on hydrogen or petrol. A button on the dash left of the steering wheel would change over from hydrogen to petrol and back. Being a dual-fuel machine the RX-8's luggage compartment was almost entirely consumed by a massive hydrogen tank. Unlike tanks designed for unpressurised petrol, hydrogen tanks cannot be made of moulded plastic that can be packaged under the floor and ahead of the rear axle. That makes the hydrogen RX-8 even less practical than its conventional counterpart. Around the track, the RX-8 felt exactly the same whether running on hydrogen or petrol. And the transition from one fuel to the other was imperceptible.

Subsequently, a Mazda spokesman offered an opinion that hydrogen combustion, such as the RX-8 offered, could become a practical reality in those markets where hydrogen refuelling is increasingly available. 'Those markets' being Europe, Japan, America – pretty much any part of the globe other than Australia. We tend to forget that hydrogen doesn't have to be a fuel for fuel cell vehicles alone, it can also power cars that combust it in a more traditional, internal-combustion way – cars like the RX-8 Hydrogen.

RX-7 10th Anniversary (Series V/FC)
The 1989 RX-7 Turbo was roundly criticised in its day for being a bit of a cruiser rather than a bruiser. A minor facelift of the car that took the RX-7 in a new design direction – one already occupied by Porsche's 944 – the 10th Anniversary RX-7 was a turbocharged model, one of the Series V variants sold in Australia. Its pre-facelift forebear was an all-new design that had migrated to an IRS system with passive rear-wheel steering. Much added weight blunted the performance edge of the naturally-aspirated RX-7, and the turbo models did little better in comparison with the SA series (Series 1, 2 and 3) predecessors. This car sampled for one lap was certainly a comfortable machine that older drivers could enter and leave without tying themselves up in knots. Yet the seats lacked for nothing holding the occupant in place around the track. Sensible ergonomics and a reasonable equipment level made the Series IV and V models likeable but lardy. At one point on the track, an alarm sounded, warning the driver the engine was reaching maximum revs. It appeared to be set to a very conservative speed, based on what the tacho was showing at the time.

If acceleration was leisurely, the second generation of RX-7 offered safe braking and cornering dynamics, and the rear-wheel steering could certainly be felt working immediately, once the driver began hounding the car through corners. We sort of take it for granted these days, but that rear-wheel steering was really something in its day. Whether due to the age of the tyres or the mu (friction) coefficient for the track, the tyres of this particular car were prone to squeal under brakes and while cornering. Everything was progressive and communicative however.

RX-7 (FD)
The last of the RX-7 line was undeniably the best. It still seems a modern car even after more than a decade discontinued. It's an easy, effortless car to drive, but with spirited performance, which is hardly surprising in view of its twin-turbo (sequentially-turbocharged) rotary. It would haul in the Series V RX-7 around the track with no difficulty whatsoever. And that was around corners as well as in a straight line. The manual gearshift was quite light, but positive and precise. Even in this left-hand drive example, it was easy to use and slick-shifting. While the first SA generation of RX-7 is fun and a bit drama-prone in the company of its successors, and the FC model with its passive rear-wheel steering is much easier to drive quickly, the FD is arguably the car that is most likely to make even mediocre pilots look capable.

Behind the wheel, the FD generation RX-7 feels like a curious blend of old and new. The HVAC and audio controls in the centre fascia seem quite dated now, and the major instruments would have felt 'retro' when the car was new. Nowadays they feel a bit like 'try-hard' retro – with big red needles and white calibrations on a black background. Still, all of that makes the instruments large and really easy to read at a glance. Everything was wrapped around the driver, placing all switchgear in easy reach. The seats were comfortable but appropriately shaped for performance motoring.