There was once a 4 rotor vette

[94touring]

[John Gervais]

Love the music!

[BruceK]

I remember when that concept car came out.  It really was said to be the 'next Corvette' in all the car magazines of the day. Back in the early 1970s the Wankel was really seen as the 'next big thing' in engines.  GM had this planned and AMC had planned to put a rotary engine in the Pacer before that idea was dropped. 


Fascinating video showing the infatuation with futuristic digital readouts.  The fixed-glass door windows they are so proud of don't really seem to address how to pay tolls or grab drive thru burgers, do they?

And holy crap, a 6.4 liter rotary engine!?  That would be gigantic!   Wonder if they ever really made a Wankel engine that big, or was it all just 'concept'? 

[94touring]

Yeah 6.4 must have been gigantic rotors or something.  Mazda made a 4 rotor for their 787b lemans car in the 90s that dominated the track, but it was 2.6 liters and made 700 or so horsepower naturally aspirated. Granted it had peripheral ports.  Then there were family cars called the cosmo with a 2.0 3 rotor that made about 300hp in stock form. Guys get 400 out of them with a little porting and bolt ons. Or turbo and make insane power.

[Jims5543]

The Chevy Monza was supposed to be a 2 rotor engine car as well as the Vette with the 4 rotor. All was scrapped because they could not come up with a way to pass emissions or get decent gas mileage out of them.

I have a cool article I will post later today or tomorrow about the race to get a production rotary on the market.

There was also a Russian company making a rotary powered car at the same time as Mazda, there was a member on No Pistons that was from Russia and would post pics of his rotary car.

[MiniDave]

Not to mention NSU, that built a single rotary in place of the two cylinder air cooled engine in the Prinze sports car, and the two rotor they had in their RO80 sedan, plus Citroen who built a few twin rotor cars, but I think they bought them all back as they had a lot of issues getting them to start.

A couple of mfrs also built rotary motorcycles, I think Suzuki did one and a couple of German  bike builders did them.

The AMC Pacer was designed to use the GM twin rotor, but when GM canceled their program they had to figure out a way to stuff one of their existing engines in the place made for the much smaller and lighter rotary they had designed it around.