Report: Mazda’s CEO confirms new sports car concept is indeed of the rotary type
Some huge confirmation news comes in from AutoCar who laid to rest any skepticism regarding Mazda’s new sports car concept due at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show.
Speaking to the outlet, Mazda’s CEO, Masamichi Kogai said the new sports car concept is indeed of the rotary type, which can only mean one thing: Mazda’s RX and rotary programs are not over!
HOONRAY!
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“It is a two-door, two-seater,” Kogai said to Autocar. “It is a pure sports car design. We have MX-5 and another icon is a rotary sports car. We haven’t talked about market reach but this would be in that segment.”
Although Mazda was long rumored to be in the works with a successor to the old Mazda RX-8, skepticism arose given the last RX-8 was criticized greatly for its rather quirky Renesis Wankel rotary, which was known to have oil consumption issues, poor fuel economy and reliability problems. As it aged, it also struggled to meet Europe’s and America’s strict emissions standards.
As a result, questions continued to surface as to whether or not the world would see another RX sports coupe powered by their signature rotary. But Mazda’s R&D chief, Kiyoshi Fujiwara confirmed his engineers behind the SKYACTIV program have been able to make the rotary better in nearly every way, thanks to new technology.
“People think rotary can not meet modern eco demands,” Fujiwara said, “The SKYACTIV engineers worked on rotary and gave it cutting-edge tech. It is an essential part of our DNA and it [will] just be passed onto future engineers. It is synonymous with the brand. Some time in the future it will return and be called SKYACTIV-R.”
– By: Chris Chin
Source: AutoCar
