It’s been nearly seven years since the last time a new Mazda with a rotary engine graced the carmaker’s showrooms. That was the RX-8, an odd-looking four-door coupe with a highfalutin’, high-revving powertrain beneath its hood and a sweetly balanced chassis. Since then, Mazda fanatics have spent many an hour clamoring for a new rotary-powered sports car, sustained only by the endless trickle of rumors that such a vehicle was just beyond the horizon.
We already knew Mazda was planning on resurrecting the rotary; that much was made clear by the company’s head honcho Mitsuo Hitomi earlier in 2019, when he revealed a new version of the company’s iconic powerplant would be used as a range-extending generator for Mazda’s first electric car, the MX-30 crossover. But the engine became famous for its appearances in sporty cars like the RX-8 and its RX-7 predecessor, so perhaps unsurprisingly, the carmaker’s own higher-ups still want to build a lithe, entertaining car with this engine beneath its hood.
“We never give up on that dream,” Mazda design boss Ikuo Maeda told Australia’s Which Car at the Tokyo Auto Show this month, on the subject of creating a new rotary-powered sports car. “I understand the clock is ticking and the environment can change. We have to see if the future environment will accept a sports car with open arms. So we understand we are racing against time.”
That “race against time” Maeda mentioned, presumably, refers to the rapid global push towards automotive electrification which threatens to render internal combustion irrelevant. Carmakers across every continent are slashing development budgets for gas-powered vehicles and their powerplants in order to dump cash into EV development — and Mazda, as a small automaker, has less cash than many of its competitors, forcing it to be more strategic about its expenditures.
One way the carmaker could cut down on costs, of course, is through platform-sharing — building a sports car with another brand, the way Toyota has with its 86 and Supra. That’s not in the cards right now, however.
“We currently do not have such plans at all,” Maeda said. But, he added, “I think we probably need to explore various different ways to actually realize it, because what’s important is actually [getting] the sports car to market.”
