A mile­stone in the tech­nol­ogy of car propul­sion has just been passed with the 40th birth­day of the mod­ern car rotary engine.

Mazda took up the chal­lenge of rotary pow­ered vehi­cles with it’s first vehi­cle, the Cosmo Sport. Though the orig­i­nal Wankel engines were under­pow­ered fuel guz­zlers even by that era’s stan­dards, Mazda con­sid­ered the engine a solid con­cept and con­tin­ued with research and development.

Mazda’s mod­ern turbo rotaries� have a firm and suc­cess­ful place in the import cul­ture in the guise of the RX-​​7 (and to some extent, RX-​​2, RX-​​4 and RX-​​4) with Series� 1 to� 8 being a com­mon sight on Aus­tralian roads, boosted to incred­i­ble pow­ers, as well as occu­py­ing strong posi­tions in motor­sport around the world.

Mazda’s non-​​turbo RENESIS engine col­lected� the Inter­na­tional Engine of the Year award for it’s debut in the then brand new RX-​​8, per­haps finally being recog­nised as a world class engine in it’s own right.

Accord­ing to Gamespot, it looks like Microsoft has decided to entice carlovers the coun­try over with a new XBox360 bun­dle, with Forza Motor­sport 2 included and ready to go. Come June 14, the bun­dle will be avail­able with a price reduc­tion on the Xbox 360 Wire­less Rac­ing Wheel from AU$199.95 to AU$149.95, with the bun­dle itself slated to be priced at $699.95.

Unfor­tu­nately, the Rac­ing Wheel’s price reverts back to $149.95� after July 31, so there’s not much time to take advan­tage of that.

The game con­tains a plethora of cars from fast exotics to Japan­ese� pro­duc­tion cars and some 45 impres­sive dri­ving are­nas, as well as appar­ently real­is­tic physics. Def­i­nitely worth a look for any car fan.

There’s some­thing going on in the world of car mod­i­fi­ca­tion. It’s a new allur­ing, dan­ger­ous idea, and now car­mak­ers seem to be embrac­ing it. I call it gaudy but the street word for it (per­haps wrongly) is “Rice” (a der­roga­tory term really) — the act of big gaudy paint jobs and fibre­glass attachments.

Check out Ferrari’s new attempt to fit in with the gaudy crowd with their new orange tinted matt black (arguable) abom­i­na­tion of the F 430.

Am I being too harsh? Per­haps. But this is an expen­sive, world reknowned sports exotic, not a 17 year olds 92 Civic!

Come on…Orange wheels!

Related:

Carsales.com.au arti­cle