TOKYO MOTOR SHOW: Mazda rotary sports car reborn

Mazda has lifted the veil of secrecy concealing its latest sports car, the RX VISION – and then promptly dropped it again.

This car, a design study that made its debut at the Tokyo motor show today, is expected to take the Wankel rotary engine into the 21st Century, in the guise of the fuel-efficient SKYACTIV-R engine.

Mazda is long known to have been working on a 1.6-litre rotary (rather than the 1.3-litre displacement of the RX-8's Renesis and previous 13B iterations) for significantly improved fuel economy without sacrificing performance.  At this stage, the manufacturer is keeping quiet about the RX VISION's rotary engine, but it is expected to be a 1.6-litre unit that will go into production at a later date.

The portents for the new RX-engined sports car are contingent on Mazda's history of developing production cars from concepts, and the long lead-in for the new-generation rotary engine – which predates the introduction of SKYACTIV technology as a marketing/engineering concept at Mazda.

While Mazda revealed little about the car during its launch today, it did confirm in a press release that the 4.4m-long sports car would seat two, would be rear-wheel drive, and would lay down its power through 20x11-inch rear wheels, which are wider than the 20x9.5-inch alloys used at the front.