We received some bad news this week. Mazda’s rotary engine died again, while the Toyota Camry just keeps on living. Here’s why we should care about the rotary engine, hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
Funk Flex
Find Flex On Google+
Maybe you’ve noticed. Cars look like offshoots of the same vanilla bean, their engines perfect little gems of electromechanical efficiency. Drivers slouch behind padded wheels, safe as jade idols swathed in velvet, glazed and untouchable as a pig trotter in a deli case. It’s a management consultant’s wet dream of a profitable, efficient, predictable, risk-averse automotive world.
This week, Mazda ended production of the RX-8, the last Mazda (or any other make) to be powered by that Reuleaux triangle-spinning figment of Felix Wankel’s teenage dream. Love it or loathe it, the visually-distinct RX-8 delivered tons of revvy, twisty-road laughs punctuated by the rotary’s characteristic swarm of angry bees. There’s little else like it on the road.
On the other hand, there’s plenty else on the road like the Toyota Camry, the best-selling car in the U.S. for 13 of the past 14 years.
