Photo: Mazda
After being left for dead since the RX-8 was discontinued, rumors about Wankel sportscars are now coming in hot and fast. The latest is from Australia, which has always been a great market for Japanese imports and where Motoring has learned some juicy details.
The successor to the rotary-powered RX-7 and RX-8 is, according to them, coming in May 2017, marking the 50th anniversary of the legendary 1967 Cosmo Sport 110S.
Street racing fans will probably care very little about that, but they will be overjoyed to learn the new Wankel could be turbocharged, producing an output estimated at 455 hp. To put that into perspective, no factory-built Mazda has ever had that much power, not by a long shot. Fitted with an array of SkyActiv technologies, this could very well be the lightest sportscar of this type in a time where most manufacturers are going for heavy hybrids.
That's the upside, the downside being that it will probably not be cheap, not surprising considering the RX-7 was in its day comparable to a base Porsche 911 and that 455 hp is more than what a BMW M3/M4 makes. We'll take that information with a large grain of salt, as the 3-year wait for the rotary engine's return seems like an awfully long time.
We could be seeing Wankels in cars far sooner than that though, not as engines, but as tiny and very light range extenders on an EV version of the next Mazda2.
Street racing fans will probably care very little about that, but they will be overjoyed to learn the new Wankel could be turbocharged, producing an output estimated at 455 hp. To put that into perspective, no factory-built Mazda has ever had that much power, not by a long shot. Fitted with an array of SkyActiv technologies, this could very well be the lightest sportscar of this type in a time where most manufacturers are going for heavy hybrids.
That's the upside, the downside being that it will probably not be cheap, not surprising considering the RX-7 was in its day comparable to a base Porsche 911 and that 455 hp is more than what a BMW M3/M4 makes. We'll take that information with a large grain of salt, as the 3-year wait for the rotary engine's return seems like an awfully long time.
We could be seeing Wankels in cars far sooner than that though, not as engines, but as tiny and very light range extenders on an EV version of the next Mazda2.
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