What Would You Want From A New RX Sports Car?

[Tina Branford]

If Mazda was too revive the rotary how would you want the car to be? I know Mazda isn't the wealthiest or biggest manufacturer so making a strictly uncompromising high performance supercar again(without Fords backing anymore) would be a financial risk to say the least. But theoretically in a situation where Mazda was big enough to create and produce anything they wanted with no concern of financial loss what would you want to see?

We know the rotary is a very capable engine for performance and motorsports applications when designed specifically for those purposes. I'd want another lightweight pure sports car with balanced handling.. though I'd like to see more power which the rotary is fully capable of... no more 300HP or less crap, that's for lower class cars or the 90's. It would be nice to see three rotors or four rotors and larger displacement rotors to boot and it would be mid engine rear wheel drive or mid engine all wheel drive.

My dream street Mazda supercar would look kind of like this on paper

Drivetrain: MR or M4WD
Engine: 3.2L 4 Rotor(800cc per rotor)
HP: 700-800
Weight: 2500lbs(1134kg)

A body style that looks similar to LMP race cars would be nice as well.

I'm sure Mazda could do this and slay basically all cars in the market but it would be EXPENSIVE.. basically a modern street legal 787B on steroids.

 

[Fastcarguy]

I would want something lightweight. Think Miata or 86 kind of weight and size, with a 2 rotor tuned to 300-350 hp connected to a 6 speed manual and rwd. Would be my dream car.

 

[Tina Branford]

That car sounds fun. It would end up not being a competitor for the Porsches, Corvette, Viper, GT-R, LFA, or NSX like it used to be. At least Rob Dahm is building a Mazda like the one I'm talking about. I can't wait to see how his 4wd 4 rotor RX-7 performs.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'd want them to take the MX-5, put a fixed-roof on it with a useable hatchback, and put in a hybrid-assist, N/A 2-rotor that makes about what the RX-8 did, but with legitimate torque down low and less low-rpm problems that rotaries struggle with. Re-style it to differentiate from the MX-5. More masculine looking. And make it reliable. Keep the rev limit below 8,000rpm. Keep the weight under 2500lbs. Basically a modern SA22C.

My RX-7 made somewhere around 160hp (best guess) when it was running. The RX-8 was rated at 230hp. My RX-7 felt much more lively, especially down low. (Note: I'm not saying it was faster) Reason - 500-600lbs lighter and an engine that was tuned for mid range rather than purely above-7,000rpm power. I hope Mazda doesn't make the same mistake again, if they try again.

 

[Tina Branford]

I'd want them to take the MX-5, put a fixed-roof on it with a useable hatchback, and put in a hybrid-assist, N/A 2-rotor that makes about what the RX-8 did, but with legitimate torque down low and less low-rpm problems that rotaries struggle with. Re-style it to differentiate from the MX-5. More masculine looking. And make it reliable. Keep the rev limit below 8,000rpm. Keep the weight under 2500lbs. Basically a modern SA22C.

My RX-7 made somewhere around 160hp (best guess) when it was running. The RX-8 was rated at 230hp. My RX-7 felt much more lively, especially down low. (Note: I'm not saying it was faster) Reason - 500-600lbs lighter and an engine that was tuned for mid range rather than purely above-7,000rpm power. I hope Mazda doesn't make the same mistake again, if they try again.

Did you have a 2nd generation FC RX-7 or what? 160hp sounds a little too high for a non turbo FB, almost right for a FC but significantly low for an FD. Was high mileage a factor in it's power rating or something? Sadly I've never owned an RX-7 or anything even though I love the cars.. I just know what I've read over the years and researched.

Nobody likes the 4 rotor MR or M4WD super car idea though. Mazda would annihilate the competition if they so wanted.

 

[niky]

Turbocharged, two-rotor rear engine rear drive car. Use a shaft to drive an alternator at the front of the car, and have all accessories (water pump, oil pump, steering, etcetera) be electric for tighter packaging.

Target is 500 hp without hybridization, on a scalable modular platform that will accept a hybrid system up front for hybrid AWD.

Target weight for the base 2-seat package will be an easily doable 1,250 kg. GT or even four-door variants should be within the 1,500 kg range.

All should come with a frunk.

 

[Northstar]

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[Eunos_Cosmo]

Did you have a 2nd generation FC RX-7 or what? 160hp sounds a little too high for a non turbo FB, almost right for a FC but significantly low for an FD. Was high mileage a factor in it's power rating or something? Sadly I've never owned an RX-7 or anything even though I love the cars.. I just know what I've read over the years and researched.

Nobody likes the 4 rotor MR or M4WD super car idea though. Mazda would annihilate the competition if they so wanted.

First gen GSL-SE (13b) - full exhaust + dellorto 48 DHLA carb. Plumbing improvements on (older) n/a rotaries make for huge gains. My setup was fairly mild, but I've seen stock-ported, 6 port 13bs make close to 200whp with the best-available header (such as defined autoworks, mindtrain, etc) and EFI throttle bodies. It's hard to say for sure, but it was significantly faster than when the car was stock. Felt almost the same as my B16a-powered civic, and that car was lighter with at least 170hp.

 

[Joey D]

Nobody likes the 4 rotor MR or M4WD super car idea though. Mazda would annihilate the competition if they so wanted.

Performance wise, sure, it'd probably dominate quite a few cars. There's just one problem though, the number of buyers for something like that it practically nil.

I mean does Mazda even have a streetable four-rotor it can leverage? To my knowledge, the only four-rotors were in prototype racecars. That means Mazda would need to develop the engine and make it capable of being able to make it reliable and meet emission standards (which it probably wouldn't).

Mazda also does not have a platform in which to start a vehicle like that. This means it'd need to start from scratch, which equates to hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the end of the day, the car would probably be phenomenal to drive, be incredibly fast, and hang with the best the Italians had to offer. But it'd probably also cost upwards of a $1 million and I'm not sure many people are in the market for a million dollar Mazda when they could buy a Bugatti for the same money.

===

Honestly, what I'd like to see is an EV sporty car that makes use of the rotary range extender. Something like that Vision concept would do nicely for a body too.

 

[Darla Starch]

I'd do a range, obvs not all on the same platform:

CHEAP/CHEERY: FWD, ~150 HP 2-rotor, size roughly comparable to an early 2000's Mini
TOTES NOT AN 86/FR-S: RWD, ~200/250 HP 2-rotor
PROPER RX-9: RWD, ~300-400 HP 2-rotor
ECO-SPORTSCARMAN: AWD, EV w/2 rotor range extender, ~40-500 HP
U GON DIE: AWD, 4-rotor/hybird, ALL THE GO-FAST TECH, 700+ HP

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Regarding the 4 rotor-hypercar idea...

Mazda now makes ONE engine (in two different displacements and with an optional turbocharger) for it's biggest single market. They are surviving, for now, but nothing more. To be honest, I don't even see their odds as very good. I'm sure every engineer and even most of the executive team would love to do something special, but even doing a rotary-engined MX-5 with no other development probably represents a risk that is too great to justify.

The CX-5 seems to be doing well, and the CX-9 does alright. The 6 is flailing, and the CX-3 was probably nowhere near what Mazda had hoped in terms of sales. The MX-5 does as well as it can, but it isn't a volume seller by any means. If the new 3 doesn't do well and the CX-5 sales start to taper off, there's a good chance Mazda is done. They really need to get the CX-30 on sale soon and just drop the CX-3 all together. I don't think people really realize how tenuous Mazda's position is. They don't have a bigger brother and they don't have a war chest of cash reserves. They are a tiny company with basically no room for error. One bad move could kill the company or at least force their exit from the US market....which would be sad considering their long-established history here in southern California. . I always think about this to temper expectations of future rotary vehicles. I actually admire how brave Mazda has been with the new 3 (in terms of it's market placement, it's price, its design, it's skyactiv-x engine, etc), it's a bold move and I really hope it works out for them.

 

[Tina Branford]

Performance wise, sure, it'd probably dominate quite a few cars. There's just one problem though, the number of buyers for something like that it practically nil.

I mean does Mazda even have a streetable four-rotor it can leverage? To my knowledge, the only four-rotors were in prototype racecars. That means Mazda would need to develop the engine and make it capable of being able to make it reliable and meet emission standards (which it probably wouldn't).

Mazda also does not have a platform in which to start a vehicle like that. This means it'd need to start from scratch, which equates to hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the end of the day, the car would probably be phenomenal to drive, be incredibly fast, and hang with the best the Italians had to offer. But it'd probably also cost upwards of a $1 million and I'm not sure many people are in the market for a million dollar Mazda when they could buy a Bugatti for the same money.

===

Honestly, what I'd like to see is an EV sporty car that makes use of the rotary range extender. Something like that Vision concept would do nicely for a body too.

You're right that most people wouldn't want to buy a 1 million dollar Mazda but I sure would. There are plenty of people who have street legal 4 rotor builds.. Rob Dahm is actually building a 4 rotor awd RX-7. Someone even made a 6 rotor RX-3 and there was a concept 12 rotor motor someone made. I believe Mazda would have to advertise and sell their successful racing history first before selling a strictly performance car like that. Mazda would have to advertise their 200 plus IMSA class wins, the 24 hour le mans victory, their GT300 victory, and the RX-7's 40 plus 1st place finishes and their very good 74% race finish ratio showcasing their reliability without suffering performance.

I'd certainly buy an exotic Mazda over other overhyped exotics.

 

[Supaboost]

Build an affordable rx7 even if its a hybrid or a just a X7.

And sale 3 or 4 rotor crate engines.

 

[Tina Branford]

Regarding the 4 rotor-hypercar idea...

Mazda now makes ONE engine (in two different displacements and with an optional turbocharger) for it's biggest single market. They are surviving, for now, but nothing more. To be honest, I don't even see their odds as very good. I'm sure every engineer and even most of the executive team would love to do something special, but even doing a rotary-engined MX-5 with no other development probably represents a risk that is too great to justify.

The CX-5 seems to be doing well, and the CX-9 does alright. The 6 is flailing, and the CX-3 was probably nowhere near what Mazda had hoped in terms of sales. The MX-5 does as well as it can, but it isn't a volume seller by any means. If the new 3 doesn't do well and the CX-5 sales start to taper off, there's a good chance Mazda is done. They really need to get the CX-30 on sale soon and just drop the CX-3 all together. I don't think people really realize how tenuous Mazda's position is. They don't have a bigger brother and they don't have a war chest of cash reserves. They are a tiny company with basically no room for error. One bad move could kill the company or at least force their exit from the US market....which would be sad considering their long-established history here in southern California. . I always think about this to temper expectations of future rotary vehicles. I actually admire how brave Mazda has been with the new 3 (in terms of it's market placement, it's price, its design, it's skyactiv-x engine, etc), it's a bold move and I really hope it works out for them.

Yeah it's super horrible how bad of shape Mazda is financially. It's like why they hell are they not selling well? Mazda is actually rated very high on Consumer Reports in regards to reliability.. number 4 for crying out loud. The MX-5 is still one of the best handling cars ever made according to some and it's a fun package. In 2008 they actually managed to hold the fastest front engine front wheel drive record with the nearly 300hp turbo Mazdaspeed3. And while Toyota and Honda have bland looking sedans the Mazda 6 actually looks like it has class. I wonder if it's the generic names that they give their cars that make them unappealing to consumers? All their vehicles are named after freakin numbers ugh. Maybe Mazda should make themselves sound more creative and pleasant and use their old names for their cars. Such as Millenia, Cosmo, Savannah or the beautiful names their concept cars had.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Yeah it's super horrible how bad of shape Mazda is financially. It's like why they hell are they not selling well? Mazda is actually rated very high on Consumer Reports in regards to reliability.. number 4 for crying out loud. The MX-5 is still one of the best handling cars ever made according to some and it's a fun package. In 2008 they actually managed to hold the fastest front engine front wheel drive record with the nearly 300hp turbo Mazdaspeed3. And while Toyota and Honda have bland looking sedans the Mazda 6 actually looks like it has class. I wonder if it's the generic names that they give their cars that make them unappealing to consumers? All their vehicles are named after freakin numbers ugh. Maybe Mazda should make themselves sound more creative and pleasant and use their old names for their cars. Such as Millenia, Cosmo, Savannah or the beautiful names their concept cars had.

Mazda is (trying to) rebound from a very long period under Ford stewardship in which their engineering departments undoubtedly atrophied. IIRC, Ford even mandated that they outright cancel all V6 engine development, because it was decided that the two car makers would use Ford engineering for 6 cylinder engines and Mazda engineering for 4 cylinder engines. (I believe I'm right in saying that you can trace the current 2.3L Ecoboost 4 all the way back to the Mazda BP engine architecture of the 1980s).

After the split, Mazda was left with precious little for itself, and so I imagine they've been unusually burdened (compared to other OEMs) by development costs as a proportion of total income - this tends to focus ones priorities. Mazda was not known for particularly well-made cars during the Ford years, so recovering from that unreliable (RX-8, CX-7 most recently), cheap & generic image was never going to be an easy or quick fix.

They are getting there, but they've also been caught out with a product portfolio not in total sync with the market. The 6 isn't selling well largely because that entire segment isn't selling well. The CX-5 is doing pretty well, and I think the newest refresh is perceived as a high quality project and more special than something like the Rav4 or CR-V. Mazda is crafting an image that seems to be finding buyers, but its a long game they kicked off around 2011 when they adopted the Kodo design language and then soon after released the first model in that mold, the CX-5. I think they are on the right track and they seem to have a pretty reasonable business development strategy...I can't blame them for not wanting to risk this rather carefully-cultivated image on a vanity project that would undoubtedly be a huge money loser (just ask Bugatti).

 

[Supaboost]

Yeah it's super horrible how bad of shape Mazda is financially. It's like why they hell are they not selling well? Mazda is actually rated very high on Consumer Reports in regards to reliability.. number 4 for crying out loud. The MX-5 is still one of the best handling cars ever made according to some and it's a fun package. In 2008 they actually managed to hold the fastest front engine front wheel drive record with the nearly 300hp turbo Mazdaspeed3. And while Toyota and Honda have bland looking sedans the Mazda 6 actually looks like it has class. I wonder if it's the generic names that they give their cars that make them unappealing to consumers? All their vehicles are named after freakin numbers ugh. Maybe Mazda should make themselves sound more creative and pleasant and use their old names for their cars. Such as Millenia, Cosmo, Savannah or the beautiful names their concept cars had.

Lack of options is the issue.

I almost got a mazda 6, 0% financing hell of a deal. Then if fwd wasn't bad enough i found it had no awd option, even worse it's pathetic power and NO v6.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Lack of options is the issue.

I almost got a mazda 6, 0% financing hell of a deal. Then if fwd wasn't bad enough i found it had no awd option, even worse it's pathetic power and NO v6.

You didn't notice these things before you 'almost got' a Mazda 6?

 

[Joey D]

You're right that most people wouldn't want to buy a 1 million dollar Mazda but I sure would. There are plenty of people who have street legal 4 rotor builds.. Rob Dahm is actually building a 4 rotor awd RX-7. Someone even made a 6 rotor RX-3 and there was a concept 12 rotor motor someone made. I believe Mazda would have to advertise and sell their successful racing history first before selling a strictly performance car like that. Mazda would have to advertise their 200 plus IMSA class wins, the 24 hour le mans victory, their GT300 victory, and the RX-7's 40 plus 1st place finishes and their very good 74% race finish ratio showcasing their reliability without suffering performance.

I'd certainly buy an exotic Mazda over other overhyped exotics.

Assuming you have enough money to buy a million dollar supercar, I think you're in the vast minority of people that would spend the money.

And yes, there are four-rotor engines our there but they are all custom setups and not Mazda factory engines. They don't need to comply with emissions testing or even be reliable. If Mazda wanted to produce one, it'd need to comply with thousands of regulations and, like the platform, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.

Also, sure, motorsports helps to sell super and hypercars, but really most people buy them for the badge. Are your rich friends really going to take you seriously if you're driving a million dollar Mazda and not a Ferrari? Probably not.

As for reliability, racetrack reliability and street reliability are vastly different. On a track, the car is in motion most of the time whereas on the street it needs to stay cool while it sits in bumper to bumper traffic. It also needs to withstand someone who isn't a race car driver behind the wheel, meaning they're going to rev the crap out of it and potentially drive it like an asshat.

Your idea works in theory, but in practice, it's not possible. Plus if Mazda were to develop a supercar, it'd either be electric or use some sort of a turbo SkyActiv engine.

 

[TexRex]

I still can't seem to figure out what this thread actually is. Judging solely by the first post, it's a kind of super limited bench racing / dream car discussion submitted by an individual that apparently wants to keep circling back to their own imaginings when others attempt to introduce reality.

 

[Tina Branford]

Assuming you have enough money to buy a million dollar supercar, I think you're in the vast minority of people that would spend the money.

And yes, there are four-rotor engines our there but they are all custom setups and not Mazda factory engines. They don't need to comply with emissions testing or even be reliable. If Mazda wanted to produce one, it'd need to comply with thousands of regulations and, like the platform, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.

Also, sure, motorsports helps to sell super and hypercars, but really most people buy them for the badge. Are your rich friends really going to take you seriously if you're driving a million dollar Mazda and not a Ferrari? Probably not.

As for reliability, racetrack reliability and street reliability are vastly different. On a track, the car is in motion most of the time whereas on the street it needs to stay cool while it sits in bumper to bumper traffic. It also needs to withstand someone who isn't a race car driver behind the wheel, meaning they're going to rev the crap out of it and potentially drive it like an asshat.

Your idea works in theory, but in practice, it's not possible. Plus if Mazda were to develop a supercar, it'd either be electric or use some sort of a turbo SkyActiv engine.

I don't care about image. I only desire real authentic performance out of a car not the status quo.

 

[Joey D]

I don't care about image. I only desire real authentic performance out of a car not the status quo.

Great, you don't care about image. But are you really the person a company is building what amounts to a hypercar for? I mean sure, you could be some ultra rich dude for all I know though.

Still, you asked what you'd like to see in new RX car. What you're proposing isn't exactly realistic nor is is really even possible given costs, engineering, and regulations.

Anyone can dream up a fantasy build by just coming up with something outlandish. I figured this thread would be more along the lines of what, realistically, Mazda could do to bring out a new RX car (probably an RX-9). Given that the Supra is back, it's actually a fair question to ask.

 

[Volksauto]

I'd think it'd be pretty cool if they brought back the Cosmo name for their next "RX" vehicle.

 

[Supaboost]

You didn't notice these things before you 'almost got' a Mazda 6?

Those are basic options on most models, higher power option and awd. For a daily beater price financing and looks were top concern and the 6 had it.

 

[TexRex]

Those are basic options on most models, higher power option and awd. For a daily beater price financing and looks were top concern and the 6 had it.

I think what's peculiar about such a statement is that you "almost got" it without being aware of those features for which you possess utter disdain.

I "almost got" a particular car once, only backing out of the deal when a mechanic pointed out issues--issues that I couldn't possibly have known about without his expertise, mind you--that made the price far less tantalizing.

Would it be more apt to say that you were briefly intrigued by it until you learned of its modest standard features and lack of higher performance options?