(first posted 2/28/2018) The first energy crisis really took the shine off Mazda’s rotary engine cars. The timing of the introduction of its new RX-4, larger and heavier than its previous cars, was not exactly fortuitous. But R&T rightfully pointed out that its competition was V8-engined American cars, and in that regard, its 17.5 mpg thirst was not bad at all. And it did scoot, better than the majority of American cars, with a 9.7 second 0-60 sprint.
Although R&T gave it a very positive review, the RX-4 was never really successful in the US, and its replacement, the first 626, was piston-engined only. The RX-4 was effectively the end of the line for Mazda’s rotary-powered passenger cars, except for the sporty RX-7 and its successors.
To the untrained eye, they look like early Celicas.
wow!!! i just started getting into car magazines at this time. thanks!!!! the memories of a 14 year old cutting school and going to the car dealers to catch a glimpse of the new models brings a tear to my eyes. it was great to see the new grills or new cars that i couldnt afford back then…………..lol. the mazdas and toyota corollas and opels are at the front of my import memories along with the bug of course. but it was all the domestic cars that caught my fancy. thanks again!!!
I have a bit of a “soft spot” for the RX4 wagon as it was one of the very few fast wagons available with a manual transmission in the 70s.
I don’t know, it is both good and bad that Mazda decided to relegate the rotary to it’s then only sports car. Yet, you have to wonder how much of an effect the “snubbing” of the rotary engine had on other innovations at Mazda. For example, at one time there was talk of a single rotor engine for powering a Mazda 2 type car.
You are likely thinking of the 1972 Chantez; other Kei manufacturers thought the single rotor 3A would have an unfair power advantage and successfully lobbied to have production blocked within the lei class. Mazda substituted a piston twin.
1974 was about the time that things began to go sour in the US for Mazda. They bet the American market farm on the rotary but the fuel crisis, the rotary’s thirst, and engine seal problems put it all in jeopardy. Paul mentioned that the RX4 was a poor seller. Also, the Cosmo coupe was a flop, and the rotary pickup was little more than an amusing novelty. Had the conventional 1977 GLC failed in the marketplace, that might have been the end of Mazda in the USA. As an aside, the RX4 wasn’t improved by a gaudy-grilled facelift for 1976.
I was just glad the U.S.-spec RX4 was merely given front and rear rubber “cow-catchers” instead of the big bumpers inflicted on the the sedans and wagons. Mazdas of this generation have always intrigued me for their rarity, quirky-but-attractive styling, and unorthodox power.
“Mazdas of this generation have always intrigued me for their rarity, quirky-but-attractive styling, and unorthodox power.”
Exactly my thoughts. Why can’t anyone build cars like this now (i.e. RWD personal coupe, interesting styling, relatively affordable -even without the rotary)?
The 1976/77 face lift was unfortunate.
I didn’t know the rear torque rods were optional. As far as I know all 13Bs had them but the 12As did not.
I had a coupe with the torque rods and a sedan without. Maybe that’s how it worked. The 1976 revamp came with true front lower “A” arms on the MacPherson struts, unlike the front lower “I” arms located by the front sway bar (a bit of a cheesy way to go) on all the prior iterations of the RXs, including the first year RX4.
It was always almost impossible to find a 1975 RX4, as the 1974s sold so slowly. The importer pretty much jumped straight from the 1974s to the 1976s, it having taken two years to clear the initial 1974 inventory of cars.
It’s worth noting that the lateral link located by the front anti-roll bar was the original MacPherson strut design; substituting a lower wishbone or a radius rod/control arm combination was the variation rather than the other way around.
My boss had this car 2door in silver . he would send 17 year old me on errands because I could drive a 4speed . another manager told him that he saw me doing burnouts , he just laughed and said he was trying to where out the tires himself .it backfired a lot
It was only a year old
I thought the wagon version was one of the more attractive small wagons of the mid 70s.
The wagon with the small bumpers looks very nice in profile. In the U.S., the RX4 sedans and wagons got the big bumpers from day one. The first year coupes in the U.S. got the small bumpers with Triumph TR6-esque “Sabrina” style bumper guards.
The 1976 cosmetic revamp lost something in the styling, but the integration of the big bumpers was much more well done.
I agree. The RX4 wagon was one of my dream cars, partly because I loved the shape, my brother first car was a piston engined 929 wagon, and we never got the RX4 wagon on our market, so it was unobtainable anyway.
In hindsight, some goods and bads on the RX4 versus the prior models. The 13B engine gave much more low end torque, but the extra weight of the car tended to take a bit off the acceleration edge and the nimbleness of handling. The other thing was the long-term real world mileage was typically in the low to mid teens, especially with the automatic, which a much larger percentage of these came with. The automatic both further crushed the fuel mileage and the zippyness of the bigger engine.
The 1974 model year redesign of the rotary engine solved most of the remaining reliability problems, except for those created by driver misuse.
The 1974 and 1975, rotary engined cars came with “performance” porting which marked the apex of factory stock engine horsepower (no matter what the published factory numbers told you). For 1976, Mazda introduced “skinny” ports which helped fuel mileage quite a bit (and actually got you to the high teens in a shifty RX4 or Cosmo), but dropped the horsepower by an amount detectable by both the seat-of-the-pants and the stopwatch.
In fairness, the lower tuned cars were easier to drive than the big port engines. The big port engines tended to buck and snort for like twenty minutes when cold which diluted the oil.
These cars were not cheap. They were Camaro money.
You know what? I just now figured out that in Mazda’s nomenclature, the RX prefix denotes a model with a rotary engine. I don’t know why I never realized that before. Actually I probably do know why — Mazda discontinued everything but the RX-7 before I was born, and I really didn’t know much about the early Mazda models until recently.
I wonder how much damage the problems with the earlier rotary engines caused regarding sales of the RX4? As I recall Madza was pretty good about warrantying the engines in the RX2’s, but 1974 may not have been a good time for (even improved, honest!) revolutionary engine designs in the U.S. given all the ‘revolutionary’ Vega engines that were dying left and right by 1974. Then, of course there was the fuel mileage issue.
By the way, any fellow conspiracy therorists notice R&T’s comment in the last paragraph? “… even if there was a fuel crisis, which we increasingly doubt.
What’s going on with that ?
The Oil Embargo didn’t officially end until March of 1974. Even at that, it wasn’t completely a 100% certainty that they’d hold to their word.
A major hurdle for the rotaries by 1974 was that people couldn’t just take them to the mechanic at the local gas station (remember those?). The combination of a finicky mechanical reputation, along with poor mileage, meant that people (potential Mazda customers) just didn’t want to deal with them. Early rotaries, between the heat and the high revs of the engine, burnt out spark plugs and point sets at a fast clip. While a knowledgeable mechanic could diagnose and fix those things quickly and easily, the formally untrained mechanics hired off the street to diagnose and repair cars in gas stations and local shops were often just flummoxed by the whole rotary thing, and would throw up their hands. So while the fixes were often cheap and easy, in many cases it took a tow truck and a trip to the Mazda dealer to sort things out. Just more hassle than a lot of people wanted to deal with, when the Detroit iron and the Volkswagens could be easily and cheaply repaired at the gas station just around the corner.
I worked a summer job at a Mazda dealership in 1987, and there were plenty of rotaries around then. Generally, they were extremely reliable by 1974, to the point of being massively over-engineered. It used only the finest metals and was a jewel like thing.
What really caused problems with rotaries was poor mantience and hopping them up. Rotaries before the 1985 FI models ate expensive spark plugs and required expensive dealer service. Many people got them well used and that’s from where the horror stories came.
They were Camaro money and what you got was a beautifully engineered jewel that only the Japanese would put in production.
One overriding impression for me of the RX4 and 929 was the impeccable fit and finish. They were a cut above the Toyotas (maybe expect the MK II & Crown) and Datsuns/Nissans of the era.
Does anyone have a link to a scan of an Australian road test of a RX4 13B?
I admired Mazda for having the guts to produce and market an engine that was unlike anything else on the market at that time.
When they first came out I remember being amazed at the effortless rev-happy and smoothness of the engine, thinking it was the “wave of the future”, like the way steam turbines replaced reciprocating steam engines, jet engines replacing piston engines in airplanes. But alas it didn’t happen. I read about the poor fuel, oil consumption, emissions and seal issues particular to the Wankel engines.
Is the Wankel engine program still alive at Mazda?
The way I see it, these were a technological dead end.
Small & light? Check
Powerful? Check
Econonical? No
Reliable? Not really, plus high oil consumption, even in top shape
Durable? Not in the least with the tip seal issues
Emissions friendly? Not in the least, these things were dirty!
Price-Expensive
Where is the advantage? You got small V8 performance with small V8 economy, even though the engine was tiny & light.
Any ven diagrams of advantages of this thing would result in pure circles, with no lines crossing over.
We actually owned an RX-4 wagon as a used car in the early 1980s. It was a wonderful car, except for the engine. We had to rebuild that darned rotary twice during our ownership, and it was neither cheap not fun. As a child, I had very intimate first hand experience with that engine, helping my stepfather with the repair. The second biggest problem was the low MPG. This was a compact Japanese car, so great economy was expected. I remember what a shock it was at the time to find out how thirsty the thing actually was. Total disconnect. That’s the main reason the car failed, and those apex seals are the reason why these cars are so rare today.
The 1976 Mazda RX-4 was an absolute delight to drive by the standards of the day. I bought one new for $3800 (list was $4300) and drove it for 9 years and 130,000 miles. It was quick and nimble, perfect for LA traffic, and averaged 18 mpg. The build quality was excellent and it was highly reliable except for the apex seals – it was on its third engine when I finally sold it. The RX-4 remains in my mind as the most fun to drive of all the cars I’ve owned.
I like Mazda, but they have had it rough here in the States for a long time. I wanted to like the rotary engine, but it was new, had maintenance issues, and importantly, wasn’t fuel efficient like standard Toyotas, Datsuns and Hondas. Subaru also had a unconventional engine, but they didn’t make that a sales point. Mazda was all about the rotary, right down to its logo. When that failed, it was nearly fatal.
These cars are well made, but still underappreciated.
A friend of mine in 1974 had a RX-2, I rode in it once and the engine was amazingly smooth. Of course my comparison was my Vega which in terms of smoothness really set the bar low. About the best milage he could get out of it was 20mpg. I remember in 1973 the EPA released its first report on milage for cars sold in the US and the milage figures for Mazda was quite low which really clobbered sales. I believe the EPA estimates for combined city and highway driving, Mazda claimed the figures for highway driving were much higher, the EPA finally did test the Mazda at highway speed along with some other domestic cars with conventional piston engines. The figures for the rotary were improved, but so were the other vehicles. I think that was the beginning of the decline for the rotary.
This car was the first Mazda with the 13-B engine, which became the standard sized rotary engine in all the future Mazdas, barring the first generation RX-7. 13-B, 1.3 liters with two rotors. Later Japan-only 3-rotors, and the race car 4-rotors, all used the same rotor dimensions (the Le Mans racer, in concept, essentially stacked two 13–B engines together into one engine, though the actual construction was much more complicated than that). So the RX-4 ushered in the “small block Chevy” of the rotary world.