Mazda RX-8

A new chapter has opened on the company's rotary-engine story with a four-door, four-seat sports car built on a new platform that will spawn other sports cars.

Over 1.8 million vehicles powered by the Wankel rotary engine have been produced by Mazda, from the low-volume Cosmo Sport in 1967 to the third-generation RX-7. The last RX-7 left the Ujina assembly line in August 2003, a half year after production of the new RX-8 began. The Wankel rotary was touted as revolutionizing the automotive industry, attracting as many as 14 automobile manufacturers around the world, though plunging to near oblivion in the aftermath of the two great energy crises and all but abandoned, except by Mazda. The mid-1990s represented “the Dark Ages,” according to Mazda's “rotor-ites,” as the RX-7 retreated from the U.S. market and sticker shock threatened the engine's very existence.

It was a band of enthusiastic rotary designers and engineers, secretly supported by several senior executives with funds squeezed out of miscellaneous accounts, that came to the rescue. Most fortunate for them was that a small team from Ford Motor Co. rescued Mazda from financial distress and had the insight and compassion to recognize and sanction the rebirth of the rotary and the creation of a new sports car powered by the engine.