Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Cars, Dates, and Home Theaters

Where did you get a 3 rotor? What's that out of? I've only ever heard of them using 2 rotors in production cars. And of course the big 4 rotor in the Le Mans winner.

Wish they'd race a rotary in Le Mans again. That would be awesome.

There was one production car in Japan, the Eunos (Mazda's luxury line in Japan, think Lexus) Cosmo (the Cosmo was the name of the first rotary to show up in the US). It normally came with a 2 rotor, twin turbo that was technologically between the design of the 2nd (1986-1991) and 3rd (1993-1995) generation RX-7s. But a few each year were produced with a "big block" 3-rotor.

A few years ago it was possible to hand over a pile of cash, and someone would import one from Japan for you. These days no matter the size of the pile, they're just about impossible to get. I could probably sell it for more than double what I paid.

Oh, those orientals and their crazy engine layouts...

GF's got a Boxer engine in her roller skate. Runs nice and smooth, and with a flat engine like that, the car could be designed to be even shorter... meaning I don't fit in that one, either.

Bren R.

Felix Wankel, the person who came up with the engine idea was German. He sold the design to NSU (German car maker), who in turn sold it to Mazda.

Oh, Karl Benz, who invented the first flat engine was also German.

Thanks for the history lesson Chris. It is always amazing to see how hard it is to displace an established technology. We're still typing on a keyboard designed to slow us down...

Put 4 of these engines together and whaddayaget?



I wonder if they have one of these at Skywalker ranch?

We spent all of about 13 seconds on the Wankel rotary engine in high school automotive. Instructor handed out paper on the history of it, showed us the miniature version you could hand crank behind his desk... we all looked puzzled and went back to traditional piston engines.

Bren R.

Bren, are you sure this was an engine?

Legend has it that my high school biology teacher found Harvey hand cranking behind his desk one day in class.

When it comes to Harvey, NOTHING surprises me.