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.