John Simister: Re‑living the rotary glory days

Five years on, Mazda was dominating the rather niche world of the rotary, although at that point NSU, the originator of the automotive Wankel, was still proffering its Ro80 saloon and seemed finally to have made it quite reliable. Mazda, by contrast, had come quite a way from its first rotary-powered machine, the Cosmo sports car, and was now into saloons and coupés that would seem mainstream were it not for the strange little engines under their bonnets.

Ever since I could read I had devoured Motor magazine, which reached the end of its road in 1988 when arch-rival Autocar took it over. I was on the staff of Motor at the time and wrote the magazine's last-ever words, but that's another story. I mention Motor now because in 1972 it disappeared from the newsagents' shelves from September to December thanks to a printing dispute, during which time the staff gave the magazine a major overhaul. On its re-appearance on December 6^th, its revamped road test – new star ratings and all – featured Mazda's rotary-powered RX3 Coupé. And now, 45 years later, I've been driving one. At and around Goodwood, as it happens. 

It belongs to Mazda UK, which has been accumulating several historic rotary-engined cars including a super-rare Cosmo (not that the RX3 is exactly abundant, especially in the UK). As you can see, it has been lightly 'enhanced' in the spirit of its age; Mazda UK may yet un-enhance it if the right parts can be found. The wide wheels add to the look of a miniaturised American muscle car, and the big-bore exhaust ensures the rotary engine's distinctive voice can be heard to the full. Not that this twin-rotor motor generates quite as much volume as Mazda's four-rotor Le Mans prototypes did, though. Those were proper eardrum-shredders – one of them speedy and robust enough to win in 1991.

Motor considered the RX3 'too heavily decorated'. Time, however, has been surprisingly kind to the particular school of adornment that Japan applied to its cars back then. The hexagon-mesh front grille is right on trend in 2017, and you have to love the badge in the middle shaped like the rotary's rotor. Then there's the proud 'Super De Luxe' badge on the rear pillar, and the racy black interior with its deeply-cowled dials and crackly AM radio.

Another of this car's enhancements is the fitment of a slightly larger motor from an early RX7 and the accompanying five-speed gearbox. Capacity is now, therefore, a massive 1146cc instead of the original 982cc – multiply each by two to get a credible equivalence to a piston engine – which means power is up from the original 110bhp to probably more than the 115bhp the replacement engine produced in its donor RX7. Let's say an extra 10bhp from the trick exhaust system because rotaries love a free-breathing exhaust.

It certainly feels like 125bhp. This is one hilariously frisky little coupé, its engine blaring and popping away like a cross between a mad four-cylinder motorbike and a really good two-stroke. The rev-counter needle rockets round the scale towards the 7000rpm where peak power likely arrives and, given the chance, it would venture well beyond. Yet, for all that, it actually pulls quite well from low speeds in a way I hadn't quite expected. Then you snick down through the deliciously precise, well-oiled gearchange gate – slick shifts have long been a Japanese speciality – apply lots of revs and you could almost be on the Bathurst racetrack in Australia where RX3s used to do rather well.

Being a rotary, the engine is almost ridiculously smooth. There is absolutely no valve gear chatter because, clearly, there are no valves. The smoothness does not, however, extend to the suspension's interface with bumps in the road, as it makes a tail-bouncing, spine-oscillating meal out of bumps you can't even see, never mind those you can. The rear suspension is simple single-leaf springs with a live axle between them, but even so… are the dampers shot? Has something broken?

Back to Motor's road test. I sometimes sense grade-inflation when I see star ratings or the blobs that have largely replaced the stars, in today's road tests. How, you wonder, can so many attributes merit four stars and so few two stars, when the average across all cars is presumably three? Not so in this first-ever 'star' road test: for 'Ride Comfort' the RX3 scored, yes, one star. Still, 'Economy' merited two (18.5mpg overall, not good), as did 'Brakes' and 'Accommodation'. Five stars for the gearbox, though; the original four-speeder must have been as sweet as the five-speeder.

There must be a damper expert today who can devise something to calm the rear-end jitters, but even allowing for that single star – generous, in the case of this particular RX3 – this is a thoroughly beguiling machine. If you thought a Capri was cool, or maybe still do, this mad rival from the other side of the world is surely sub-zero. Apart from anything else, the RX3 merges controls for indicators, wipers, washers, headlamp flash/dip/main and the parking lights in one stalk on the steering column. That's early-1970's Japanese cleverness.

Can you imagine Britain's Lucas, supplier of electrical bits to nearly every British carmaker, engineering one of those? No, nor me.