The Wankel rotary is famous for pretty much one thing – being the beating heart in one form or another of Mazda’s RX cars.
While Mazda has been the biggest champion of the quirky rotary format over the years, deploying it in its sports cars and a few other things now and then, it wasn’t the first to the tech. Nor has it been the only major manufacturer to give it a chance.
We’ve picked out a few cars not wearing an RX badge to use a Wankel, and only one of them is from Mazda…
NSU Spider
Rewind to the 1950s for a moment, and to the life of a man named Felix Wankel. He’d been contracted by a German manufacturer known as NSU to help bring his life’s work to a production car – the Wankel rotary.
It would take a while to come to fruition, largely due to engineering issues related to sealing (where have we heard that one?) but in 1964, a dream became a reality. The NSU Spider came to market.
Using a single-rotor engine, it produced 54bhp from the rear-mounted unit – not bad for the time. It turned out the engine was an intriguing proof of concept, yet everything else about the Spider itself was subpar. It gave promise for the tech, but one that NSU could never fulfil with the hopeless Ro80 following on – with NSU then merging with Auto Union to form Audi and never to use a rotary again.
Mercedes C111
It must’ve been a great time to be an engineer at Mercedes-Benz in the 1960s. The manufacturer was throwing money left, right and centre at the development of new experimental technology, and the various forms of the C111 were its crown jewels at the time.
Its first was revealed in 1969, utilising a 276bhp mid-mounted three-rotor engine – followed at 1970’s Geneva Motor Show with a version using a 349bhp four-rotor.
That later one is the best remembered of all the C111s, capable of a top speed of 186mph. For a car that was technically road-legal, in 1970.
Had it entered production, a rotary C111 would’ve surely gone down in history as one of the few production cars to hold the title of the fastest in the world. It would never be, with the rotary deemed unviable on reliability grounds and Mercedes resisting demand from potential buyers.
The final of the 12 Mercedes C111 prototypes would be fitted with a 3.0-litre turbodiesel engine as a testbed for the unit later seen in the W116 and W123.
Citroen GS Birotor
Credit: PLawrence99cx/Wikicommons
In a way, it’s strange many old French cars didn’t use rotary engines given how utterly weird some were in the ‘60s and ‘70s – although we’re delighted to say Citroen gave it a go.
In 1964, it established a company called Comobil with our old friends NSU specifically as a venture to build rotary engines for the two manufacturers. It was supposed to be the go-to for any other brands fancying a Wankel.
Although NSU tried and failed to make it work in the ‘60s, it wouldn’t be until 1974 that Citroen tried rotary with the GS Birotor.
To call it a success would be… well, a lie. What Citroen couldn’t control was the unfortunately timed oil crisis, which made the idea of purchasing a gas-guzzling rotary a horrendous idea. Though its death knell was the awful reliability of its two-rotor engine, leading to the manufacturer buying back a huge chunk of them from customers.
Its failure and the massive costs associated with Comotor meant Citroen needed to sell a huge stake of itself to Peugeot, which would eventually become a majority shareholder in the late ‘70s. Maybe some slight good came of it after all.
Chevrolet XP-895
Pictured: V8-powered Aerovette
There is a parallel universe somewhere out in the far reaches of the galaxy where people are driving around in rotary-powered Chevrolet Corvettes. Something that could only be a product of a John Delorean-era Chevy.
With work starting in the ‘60s, a time when pretty much every manufacturer was fascinated by the potential of the rotary, the Chevrolet XP-895 asked ‘What if?’ to the idea of a Wankelvette.
It began life as the V8-powered, mid-engined XP-882 before Delorean initially decided to cancel that project. Only for Ford to begin officially selling the DeTomaso Pantera through its network, with Delorean immediately asking for one of the prototypes to be brought to the 1970 New York Auto Show.
Further work would continue in 1972 when it became the XP-895 and used an experimental 420bhp four-rotor engine based on a two-rotor version in development for a Vega that would never see the light of day.
That would then morph into the XP-895, now with a smaller two-rotor, although that would spell the end for a rotary Corvette as the oil crisis led to GM canning all rotary work.
While the project would once again reemerge as the V8-powered Aerovette, the one rotary example would be sold privately and later fitted with a Mazda 13B engine. Speaking of which…
Eunos Cosmo
Ah, we had to give Mazda some time in the rotary spotlight, but this one is perhaps the most curious of them all.
Introduced in 1990 as the flagship of Mazda’s Eunos luxury brand, the Cosmo was a big grand tourer designed to showcase everything it could offer in a car. That included it being the first production car to use satellite navigation, as well as being offered with a touchscreen, a mobile phone and even television. Again, 1990.
You could have the Cosmo with a two-rotor 13B engine producing 227bhp or the one you really wanted, the 20B. This three-rotor adhered to the Japanese gentleman’s agreement of 276bhp, although it’s thought it was producing north of 300bhp from the factory in reality.
They’re a unicorn in this day and age, but it may be the finest example of a rotary car ever made – depending on your opinion of the FD RX-7.